


A Thousand Summers Under the Earth

by Val Mora (valmora)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dysphoria, Electromagnetism with magic in, Incest, Languages, M/M, Smithing, Tattoos, Xenobiology, economic/political structures, hermaphroditic Jotun, interworld travel, legally reinforced homophobia, significant amounts of time spent underground, trigger warnings for 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, xenopolitics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:32:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 48,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The punishment for Loki's crimes should have been death, by logic and by law; but his sorcery precludes it.  And now that Thor has his brother again, he cannot help but seek out his presence, his advice, on the matters of state to which they were both born and raised. It is unwise, but better to seek Loki's advice than to be entirely a fool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to, in no particular order:  
> Gary, for the geology help  
> Peri, for enabling me, cheerleading when I thought I would never finish, and beta-reading  
> Sunny, for beta-reading even while moving halfway across the world  
> the usual suspect (♦), for the medical details, and for being there
> 
>  
> 
> The semi-official drinking game for this fic:  
> \- drink when someone refers to something not being permanent  
> \- drink when there's martial arts  
> \- drink when there's a reference to science (however faulty)  
> \- finish your drink when superconductors appear  
> \- drink when Val's fondness for languages and linguistics shows  
> \- drink when other societies are better at gender equality than the Æsir  
> \- drink when Æsir conceptions of masculinity are challenged (make it two if Thor or Loki internalizes that challenge)
> 
> As always, if I am fucking up the gender stuff, give me a shout on what it is, and I will fix it.

Loki is kept in the city's main prison, where they are equipped to restrain sorcerers, for three weeks while the Thing is convened.

The highest court of judgement, which sits the direct vassals of the King of Asgard, meets twice a year, and only if there is business: trade, or disputes between them. A man is called to the Thing once every few years; there are more vassals than places, as the Thing usually calls only twelve; twenty-four if it is considered a heavy matter, and thirty-six if it is of deep import.

For Loki, the Allfather calls forty-eight, of whom twelve are to stand in ready should it prove necessary. 

While his brother waits in prison, Thor waits in the palace. He trains, though it feels empty and without purpose; he sits in on his father's councils, though he understands little enough of them; he resists returning to Midgard, which was so damaged. He thinks of Loki.

He does not visit. Loki's deeds were heinous enough that he may be declared outlaw, and Thor, as Crown Prince, cannot be seen to still care for him.

Crimes serious enough to come before the Thing are usually punished by death.

Thor _is_ angry: he saw the corpses being cleared from the streets, the hospitals filled with the injured and dying. The broken buildings in a city once great enough to almost rival Asgard itself. But Loki is his brother, and his death would rip open some part of Thor. Like sinews tearing, wet and messy, and difficult if not impossible to heal.

+++

On the second day of the Thing – the first is taken up by trade matters, and afterwards, Thor can recall none of what was said, despite sitting through every excruciating minute of it – Loki is called before the Allfather's vassals.

An hour before the hearing, he is brought to the palace by prison guards, his ankles hobbled in irons, his hands bound together in heavy lodestone cuffs to muffle his sorcery, his mouth covered in metal to stop his tongue.

Thor watches from the window, aching at the sight of him. Loki is not clothed as a prince, but as a simple freeman, and the shackles disrupt his gait into something strange and faltering. He is humbled by force, a falcon with bound wings. Thor does not wish to set him free, but he also cannot bear to watch. 

For the Thing itself Loki wears only the cuffs, which still bind his magic. He stands before the forty-eight men assembled to judge him, and the leader, Aðgils, says, "Loki. Laufeyson. You stand accused by witnesses of seeking to conquer Midgard. You are accused of responsibility for the deaths of thirty thousand mortals, and the injury of fifteen thousand more, and the near-destruction of a great city of the realm of Midgard."

Loki blinks, twice, and tilts his head down. Rubs the insides of his wrists together. "I don't deny it." A sharp intake of air, and he looks up again. His eyes are bright-wet. "It was a foolish, selfish, unthinking act, and it was right that I, and the Chitauri who wished me to conquer Midgard for them, should fail." A heaving breath.

Thor cannot believe his eyes. He knows the remorse is a lie because Loki never weeps when he is sorry. Loki is never sorry. He chafes at consequence, not at the act that led him to it. Thor saw Loki on Midgard, his madness and his spite. His side still aches with phantom pain from Loki stabbing him. This – lying thing, with dark hair and sloping shoulders, that confesses freely to his crimes, this cannot be his brother.

"I cannot atone for my acts, and so I do not ask forgiveness," Loki says finally, and falls silent. There are tear-tracks on his cheeks.

Thor feels ill. He wants to cry out, _Liar!_ , or _We both know you do not regret what you did there,_ or _Why are you giving them what they need to condemn you to death?_ but he cannot say it. Cannot bring himself to give up his brother's secrets, even when he knows it would be better to let slip the truth.

Aðgils leans forward, glancing away from Loki at Thor, and then back. "You do not wish to defend yourself in combat?"

Loki shakes his head, smiling faintly. "I'm not a warrior, and the accusations are true."

The jab at his own fighting abilities is a half-truth. A dagger, as Loki bears, is a close-range weapon as much as a throwing one, and he is well-capable of doing damage in close quarters when he wants. That he prefers sorcery is – well, Thor would once have said laziness, but he is beginning to think more on his words where Loki is concerned. 

"And you have no defense prepared?" 

Loki moves one hand, as though to make some gesture, but it is cut short by the weight of his other hand, and the manacles binding both.

"I knew that Midgard was under Asgard and the All-Father's protection." His fingers fold listlessly into his palm, not a fist. The line of his fingers against his skin, against the heavy grace of the manacles, is beautiful somehow. "I could have chosen to die instead of conquer and kill." A slow downward tilt of his chin. "If you assembled here see fit, I will die as punishment for that choice."

Is Loki mad? The thought of Loki being dead, lost to Thor, is unfathomable. He has always had a brother. To lose Loki would tear loose the roots of Thor's self.

His chest aches as Aðgils sends Loki away. 

"The verdict seems clear," Aðgils says, once Loki is out of the room. "Death as payment for deaths."

There is a low murmur of assent, and then Thor's father, seated outside the circle, rises. He is not in his throne-finery, and he is without his spear of office, yet all turn to look at him. "Loki is a sorcerer, and the logic of the worlds is different for his type," he says, slowly.

Thor's belly goes cold. To watch Loki hang, or be beheaded, for his crimes, and then to watch him rise again darker and more powerful and bitter with revenge –

He stifles the childish foolish urge to curl up around Loki, his belly pressed to Loki's back as they once slept when they were very small. That any danger or harm unknown would fall first upon Thor, who could better bear it; and any danger that they could see coming, Loki would know already how they could fight it together. 

They have not shared a bed for centuries, but still he wants it. His hands feel empty, the heavy span of his own chest aching for the pressure of Loki's shoulder blades.

The assembled warriors' faces are shock-struck, while Aðgils frowns. "Then we cannot sentence him to die," he says. 

"The prison is equipped to hold him as long as necessary," says Kálf, son of Dýri. He is his father's second son; the first is mad, and dangerous to others. Thor does not know why he was allowed to sit in judgement here.

There is a long silence, a shifting, and then finally Harði – a poet of some skill, though slow to jests – says, "There is a story I heard from a trader from a far-off world, that a thousand serpents and other venomous creatures put in a sealed jar and buried together would eat each other, until only one remained; and the poison of that one beast, would kill a thousand men with one drop." He gestures faintly to the center of the circle. "Imprisonment would only make his spitefulness stronger, and drive him mad."

"He is already mad," someone says. "Did you not see him weeping with false regret?"

"Then he has always been mad," someone says, and Thor only realizes it was he when there is silence following the remark. He rises from his seat outside the circle – he was to be a witness, as one who had seen Loki's deeds in New York City. But he is also Loki's brother.

"I do not excuse his killing on Midgard, and I want him to serve his punishment for it. But he is not mad." Thor is as certain of that as he is of Mjölnir's strength.

"Then what is he?" Aðgils asks. "He is a murderer, and a traitor to the house that fostered him, by his own admission."

"Would you not kill, or send to the wilds, a hound that bit the man who kept it?" adds Hatt.

Thor takes a step towards him. "Mind what you call my brother."

Harði coughs. "My wife had a hound who bit," he says, musingly. "I sent it out of the house, to join the hunters. It was of use there, even though it was unfit for my lady wife. Perhaps his purpose is elsewhere."

"And anyway there is the matter of weregild, if he is not to be killed." Trjónn has mines on his fief, and there are frequent injuries there. Trust him to think like a merchant. 

Aðgils sits up straighter. "Scribe – what would be the weregild owed?'

"One moment." A few clicking moments on the counting-board, and then, "In what measure?"

"Lodestone."

"Nineteen thousand, five hundred and thirty-one pounds."

Thor had heard several estimates of the weregild of the casualties, but always in the Midgardian currency that was valid in New York City, which means nothing to him. To hear it put in an easy reference, in Asgardian coin, is shocking. It's fifty times the annual budget of the Court. It's nearly the value of Asgard's annual exports to the other realms combined.

This is Loki's doing. This cost, in the pain and blood of Midgardians. Not to mention the damage wrought to the homes and shops in the area – Thor has little thought what those costs will be, but it is far more than the weregild, he thinks. He has no idea how Midgardians value the lives of their own compared to their property, but the property was dear indeed.

There is no way that Loki can ever redeem that much money. No man could – no house could. How could he hope to meet his legal requirements but by dying?

And in dying, erase his debt, and then return unburdened –

But of course Loki would have had no intention of paying the weregild. He intended to win.

Thor returns to his seat beside his father, heavy with the weight of Loki's misdeeds.

"Are we agreed that he cannot be let free?" Aðgils says. The assembled men nod. "Nor may he be killed." 

"But he may be sent away," Harði interjects.

"Who would take a half-mad Jotun known to be a liar, a sorcerer, and a traitor?" murmurs Sigurd. Thor tenses with the effort of not striking him. The accusations are true, and Loki would not deign to defend himself against facts of which he is unashamed. Nor can Thor defend him in his stead, not now and not here. Not when he was meant to be a witness against Loki.

"The sorcery is easy enough to bind away," Harði says, "we have done it already. And one need not put him where he need be trusted. And there is the matter of weregild – I had a case which I judged, where the weregild owed was more than the man was worth, but it had been an accident. I allowed him to put the payment in abeyance, and pay instead over time, that he need not pay in blood."

Trjónn frowns. "He has not the skills to make a thing, or any number of things, whose value can pay the weregild owed; and anyway no man has the lifespan to return that sum. But better to get a portion of the sum than nothing at all."

Harði is smiling, faintly. "Send him to learn a trade, then, far away from most others, and he can pay back parts of his debt with the result."

Tyr shifts in his chair. "Ask Völund the smith if he would have an apprentice," he says, and spreads the fingers of his false hand, the mechanical joints clicking softly in the silence.

+++

So Loki goes to the mountains in the west, where Völund's forge lies. Thor has never himself been to see Völund; Mjölnir was made by Dwarves, and he has had little need of other weapons or metalwork.

Thor promises himself a month. A month, to allow Loki to settle in and adapt to this new life of punishment, and to learn something of the craft Völund is to teach him. He will wait a month to see his brother the traitor-killer-criminal.

Two weeks in, he realizes his horse needs to be re-shod. It could easily be done in any of the forges in the city proper – there are a number of them – but he has spent the last two years, ever since Loki's drop from the Bifrost, turning to his brother's place at table in the thought of sharing a jest, or standing suddenly in a set of empty chambers, seeking to roust to adventures a late-sleeping brother who is gone. Knowing that Loki is alive, is not lost except in spirit ( _thirty thousand dead and fifteen thousand wounded,_ whispers his shame), makes this habit the more unbearable. So he leads Hvat by the bridle the distance to the mountains, with one shoe missing.

He arrives near sunset, though up here in the mountains sunset is earlier than it would be in the city of Asgard proper. He can hear noise from the forge before he sees anyone, so he makes his way there.

Loki is standing at a bellows, pumping it. Wearing a leather vest, bare-armed and sweating, hair tied back. He glances up, then looks deliberately to the side, where a man is standing, heating something in the forge.

"You have a guest," Loki calls, though it is hardly audible over the roar of the fire.

"I will see you shortly," Völund, for it must be him, calls.

Thor waits in the doorway for nearly five minutes before Völund moves on from his task and comes to him. His gaze sweeps over Thor's clothing – the light armor, the red cloak, the heavy silver brooches at his shoulders.

"Prince Thor," Völund says, and nods a half-bow. It is rude, but he has no need of courtesy in this place, where there are no others.

"Smith Völund."

"You are here to see your brother, then." Völund cracks his knuckles, without looking down.

"My horse threw a shoe," Thor says, gesturing to Hvat, who is nosing at some low-hanging mulberries from a nearby tree. 

"I do not make horseshoes," Völund says. "Better you had stayed in Asgard and had it done there." His mouth twists. "Unless your mount, like your father's, is half-Jotun."

Thor nearly curls a hand into Völund's shirt to drag him forward in threat. "Mind your tongue when you speak of my brother."

Völund barks out a laugh. "He minds his not when he speaks of you. Go, take him away. I have no need of him until dinner is ready – you are welcome as well; there is ale enough."

"And of my horse?"

"I have nothing for you, and Loki has not the skill to make it. You will have to return as you came." He turns away without being dismissed and goes into the little cabin beside the forge. 

Thor enters the forge, where Loki is putting tools away in what are probably their proper places after a day of work.

"Two weeks," Loki says, mocking. "You must be lonely in your golden palace, to come this far for what you can't have." He hangs a pair of tongs on a nail on the wall, and Thor notices the heavy bands at his wrists, made of lodestone to inhibit his sorcery.

"I only wanted to see you."

Loki spreads his arms. "Now you have. Go on – night is falling, and I hear the roads back to the capital are dangerous."

"Völund invited me for the evening meal."

Loki raises his eyebrows. "Could he do otherwise?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, Thor," Loki sighs, stepping closer to him. "He doesn't like having guests, you know, but you're the son of his liege, and the prince – how could he not invite you, without giving offense to your house?"

Thor cannot speak, for all the things that trouble him in Loki's words. He heaves a breath in and reaches for Loki's elbow, to feel the comfort of touching him, but lets his hand drop before it can arrive, knowing Loki would not welcome it.

"I would not take offense," he says finally.

"What does that have to do with it?" Loki asks, and comes closer yet, curling a hand against Thor's side, palm right over the scar where the blade went in. The wound stayed open for hours, and Midgard has no healing stones that would have allowed it to heal without scarring – instead Hawkeye stitched it, as is done in war. He received proper medical care when he returned to Asgard, but the light-colored smear of it still remains, and the little pin-pricks from the thread used to bind it.

"I am not unreasonable, that I would punish others for – "

"You have killed over false hospitality before," Loki says sharply, "and anyway, you have no idea what hospitality you are worthy of, because they all fall down to give it to you – you being first prince, and Odin's heir." 

"I would not allow anyone to give you less," Thor swears, before he remembers New York City, and he watches Loki's slow, wicked smile grow. "You know what I meant."

"I do," Loki says, still smiling, and steps away, to put away more of the tools. Thor watches him until he is done, and all that time Loki does not acknowledge him again.

+++

The bright-moon is out, so after eating – Loki ignores him all through it – Thor declines the offer of a lantern to light his way back to the city, and he and Hvat return to the palace around dawn. He was not offered a bed, and did not expect to be. 

He is tired, and Hvat is walking with a pronounced limp, so he leaves Hvat with the palace blacksmith and goes to his bed.

He wakes again near noon, having missed some session or another with his father, and skips the meal in order to go train. It goes well enough, and the feeling of missing a presence at his right hand and his back – for he and Loki often took matches jointly, to better approximate real battle conditions – is less than it was before last night. Even if he remembers the flickering wicked smile Loki gave him with a sort of heart-stopping despair, knowing that Loki does not regret what he did on Midgard. Knowing that Loki does not count the cost of those thousands of dead and the despair of their kin, only the unspent portion of his own rage against Asgard.

So he trains, to linger in the comfort of no longer feeling unguarded and off-balance. His father will not be pleased that he slept through the morning councils, and then skipped the ones in the afternoon to train.

It will have been worth it, his father's displeasure in trade for seeing Loki, hearing his voice again.

+++

Father says nothing when Thor joins the council late, but then, he would not. Thor knows well enough that it was irresponsible; Father would see no need to reprimand him for the obvious.

It is something involving Alfheim. There are ongoing disputes there, between the Elves and the Dwarves, that Thor cares nothing for. All the debate about how to navigate the dispute bores him: what is it to Asgard that they dislike each other, despite being so similar, and living on the same world? The only difference that Thor can see is that the Dwarves live beneath the ground, and are pale with the sunless dark of their homes, while the Elves are dark from the sun under which they live.

He sits through the meeting, offering nothing, knowing little more of the situation when he leaves than when he joined, and then sits through dinner, restless, but hungry from all his training.

Once, when he is reaching across the table for some bread, his mother catches his hand and presses some blueberries into his grasp; one of them smears purple juice across the lines on his palm.

He opens his hand and eats one, then another. Loki eats berries as though he could live on them forever. They used to toss them into each other's mouths as tricks. 

His mother smiles at him, bright with kindness, and he wonders if she knows that he went to Völund's forge. Why else would she give him some of Loki's favorite food?

Fandral steals one out of his open palm, and shivers, mouth pursing. "Not quite ripe yet," he says, and takes a bite of meat.

"I had not noticed," Thor says, looking down.

+++

He sits through some negotiations with a few of the western vassals: Snæbjörn, his son Snækoll, of Apalbrekka; Stóði, of Eskholm; Kuggi of Mikilgata. Stóði, whom Thor knows less well, is not often at Court and is closer to his father's age than his own, while Thor has trained with Snækoll and Kuggi. The west has had a cold winter, and a hot summer before that, and there have been cattle raids all the last five years that have left all those territories at each other's throats. 

That, and there was the unfortunate business of how Kuggi's sister, who had been promised to Snækoll, ran off with some itinerant Dwarf merchant. Kuggi and Snækoll were once good friends – they were inseparable all through their time training at Court, and striking to look at as well; Snækoll is red-headed, light-skinned and broad-shouldered, heavy-boned and solid, while Kuggi is dark and lean, and deadly-quick with a sword – but that fondness is now cut with their respective offenses.

He listens to them argue, and knows that their grievances are important. It is that there is no solution that will please all of them, not that Thor can see, and his father is making no move to pass judgement.

Thor's own temptation is to take a portion of both their cattle, for feuding, but even he knows that that would only beget resentment, and do nothing to settle their tempers.

There was a time that when he and Loki squabbled, they would both have some treat forbidden them; when they were younger, it was sweets at dinner, or their favorite toys. Worst of all was to be sat down in chairs and told to face the walls on opposite corners of a room, while Mother wove in the center of it and made sure they did not speak, nor fidget overmuch. Such tactics would not work on adults.

Eventually, the hearing is adjourned, to reconvene in two days' time with a verdict. After the others have left, Father turns to him and says, "What do you make of their claims?"

Thor turns one hand over, uneasy. "They are all wronged, all by each other, and none will admit to having wronged another."

"And?"

"There are no witnesses against them to bring enough charges for lesser outlawry. Or the witnesses are as guilty as the accused." 

"And?"

"And that is all," Thor says. "There are no good solutions."

"I see," Father says, sitting back in his chair. "This hearing will reconvene the day after tomorrow. You will be the one to pass judgement: Snækoll and Kuggi are your men; they will be beholden to your judgement long after I have left the throne. I look forward to hearing your solution to their problem."

Thor nods. "Yes, Father."

"You may go."

+++

That evening he goes to Loki's quarters to think. Loki's things are still in them, though they have been cleaned, since. Thor is not sure what Mother will want done with Loki's things – it is not as though any other man could have use of his heavy armor, emblazoned with the royal house's crest. And his clothes are too fine to be worn near a forge, most of them, though it is hardly as though Loki will ever have need of Court formal dress ever again.

Thor drags his fingers over the sheet's of Loki's tightly-made bed, then, restless, opens the chests of his clothes: socks here, an assortment of wool needle-bound ones and plain woven leg-wrappings; and in another his gloves, ones for winter mixed up with gauntlets for falconry. Thor takes one out, slides it onto his hand. It is a bad fit. Thor has not the patience for falconry, and anyway the birds are gone; the peregrines were given away to other falconers at Court. He thinks Hogun keeps the eagle still, though he may have had it sent to a friend of his in the far provinces, where they have problems with wolves.

Now that Loki can no longer be thought dead, and he will never return to Court, Thor is not sure what Mother will do with these clothes, the knicknacks on the cabinets, the books in chests by the side of the room. The idea of giving away Loki's things sits ill upon him, but even so, there is no purpose to keeping them. 

If anything, there is less than no purpose to keeping them: showing that they love Loki still is a weakness.

There are some Vanir sweets, little hard sugar-candies flavored with fruit juices, in a pouch in with the socks. Thor eats one, then takes the pouch and hangs it from his belt. Loki might even be happy to have them, next they see each other.

Thor stills his hands. He – will see Loki again. Loki, sunken-eyed and gone thin, in clothing far more simple than any either of them have ever worn, cuffs leaving bruises on his wrists. 

Loki would know what to do with this case. He would think up some gloriously clever scheme, that would be self-evidently the correct solution yet offend everyone. Loki is reliable that way. Thor licks the taste of the candy – a foreign, half-bitter fruit flavor – out from the back of his mouth, where he chewed up the candy, and then sits down on the bed.

It is impossible to trace the insults that each man has paid the others, and they will all deny the claims against one another. Kuggi was right, by the law, to have the bride-price refunded to him when Drífa broke the engagement, and to keep the price of her dowry, but it was not kind of him. Not when Snækoll had been his friend.

But that was before the cattle-raiding grew out of hand. If only there were a way to keep tally of each holding's lost cattle, and find who had benefited, and remove that benefit. 

+++

At the noon meal the next day, Sif catches his elbow, turns his arm. There is a heavy bruise on his forearm, extending from just below his elbow most of the way to his wrist.

"Where did this come from?" she asks, not touching it. 

He flexes his hand, wincing with the rising stiffness. "I blocked Arnulf's blow during training; he must have hit me harder than I thought." 

"It looks painful," she says, releasing him. "You should put a healing stone on it."

Sif would know – she bruises more easily than many other warriors, though not as easily as Fandral, and is more likely to take care of her injuries. Thor pats her shoulder. 

"I will go as soon as I am done eating," he says. But he does not.

The bruise spreads, and he begins to be sore, his joints aching as he walks to the council chambers. Today is more about the Elves and the Dwarves. Thor tries to listen, but he has never been much interested in that old hatred. It is like this feud between Kuggi and Snækoll: too old and too complex to truly solve, and every effort at resolution only renews it.

+++

The day after, the aching is better, but the bruise remains, and now covers most of his forearm. He crushes a healing stone from the training halls over the injury, and watches the blood darken, then fade, beneath his skin. 

When Arnulf comes to practice, Thor slaps him on the back, congratulating him on his strength and his ability to leave a bruise. Arnulf beams, and applies himself anew to his skills.

That afternoon, in the hearing, Thor gives each of the plaintiffs a piece of paper. 

"Write down what you think you are owed by each of the others," he says. Stóði stares at him, then up at Father, then back to his piece of paper. Thor collects each of the scraps.

"Kuggi, of Mikilgata: you say that Snæbjorn of Apalbrekka owes you three hundred cattle, and that Stóði owes you fifty.

"Snæbjorn – you say you are owed one hundred fifty head of cattle from Stóði, and eighty by Kuggi.

"And Stóði, you say that Kuggi owes you twenty, and Snæbjorn owes you fifty. Each of you claims a debt from the others. Do any of you acknowledge any debt owed to the other two here?"

Snæbjorn huffs in disbelief. "Kuggi has no right to claim a debt from us: when Drífa eloped with the Dwarf, we returned her bride-price, but Kuggi demanded further repayment, to salvage his honor – as though we ourselves were not dishonored when she ran away! When we did not pay it, for he had not the right to the money – he thinks honor can be regained solely through money, like a Dwarf – he took it in cattle, and has had the effrontery to demand more!" He purses his mouth at the floor near Kuggi, as though he would spit if he were not before the King and the Crown Prince.

Kuggi stands. "I was entitled to honor-iron by law," he begins, face tight with anger. "It was upheld by the Thing – "

"Which was assembled only of –" Snækoll bursts out, standing himself, before Thor pushes them apart, back into their seats.

"Be silent when your liege speaks," he says. He does not blame them for losing control; he would, too, if offered such an insult. Kuggi has less of a temper than Snækoll, but his ancestry is a sore spot. There were stories that he was a bastard, when he was small, for he is lighter-skinned than both his mother and father; but when he grew to his father's height, and began to wear his father's sternness, it was clear that his paternity was true.

"Sir," Kuggi says, grimly, and bows, touching his forehead in obeisance, a gesture that Snækoll echoes, though more deeply.

He sits down, and, well, he is not skilled at sums, but this much he can do. "Since none of you will admit to wrongdoing, but all claim that you are wronged, I cannot trust in your honesty. So: Snæbjorn, you claim from Stóði one hundred fifty cattle, and he claims from you fifty. The difference between you is one hundred cattle. Stóði: I say Snæbjorn owes you fifty cattle, which is half of what he claimed, in order to show respect for both your claims. 

"Snæbjorn claims from Kuggi eighty cattle, and Kuggi claims three hundred. A difference of one hundred twenty cattle, and halved being ninety. Give Kuggi ninety cattle.

" Stóði, you claim twenty cattle from Kuggi, who claims fifty from you. A difference of thirty, halved to fifteen; and you shall pay that to him.

"The Court will send an accountant with you to see that these payments are fulfilled." He sits, tired, and looks at the sourness on the faces of all four men. He cannot bear to look at Father, who likely will disapprove as much, if not more. 

After the others have left, Father gazes at him, and Thor watches him back: it was not a good solution; even he knows that. But what was he expected to do?

His father looks away, dismissing him, and then says, "There is council tomorrow. I expect to see you."

"Father," Thor says in acknowledgement, bowing, his fist over his heart, and then leaves.

+++

The market-day, when his father does not hold council nor hear complaints, is three days later; Thor leaves early in the afternoon of the night before, and reaches Völund's forge as the shadow-moon comes into the sky, just past full. The bright-moon has been in the sky much of the time for the last few days, and is nearing full, slowly, with one month left to Midsummer.

There is no one at the forge, and when he knocks on the door to the house itself, no one answers. There is no indication of where they might have gone, whether hunting or to market or anywhere else. 

He waits, first standing, then sitting, beside the front door of the house. He sweats in the heat of the setting sun, which shines straight into his eyes, and watches the horse – one of the ones from the palace stables, whose name he does not know, though it is a fine enough mount, with a steady gait and a strong back – graze aimlessly at the grass and weeds growing between the house and the forge.

The sun is just fallen when Völund returns, Loki in tow, both of them carrying packs and bags. Loki's hair is chopped short, uneven, and the ragged ends of it, along with the humble clothing, make him seem not himself.

When Völund sees Thor, he halts and nods his head in acknowledgement. He says nothing.

"I am only here to see my brother," Thor says.

Loki chokes out a breath, closer to a mocking laugh, and says, "Let us pass through the door and put away the food, and then you and I can talk."

Thor steps aside and waits. When Loki reemerges some minutes later, there are two iron bands on each of his wrists – the familiar ones, for his magic, and another set with a chain strung between them, and another linked to that one that leads into the house.

Thor sets a hand on the leash – for that is what it is – and feels the iron and the magic within resist his strength. There is a hint of uru in the links, perhaps only a drop, but enough that he would have to fight to break them and free Loki.

"Why do you wear this now, as well?"

Loki shrugs. "I tried to smash the magic-bands with a hammer while Völund was in the house. It was deemed that I should be bound to him at all times."

"But you were not, just now, when you came back."

"There is a proximity spell that he can use, also. It causes pain if I am too far from him."

As though Loki is a beast that will turn and savage even a hand extended in kindness.

Loki pushes at him. Only then does Thor realize that he is grasping Loki's hand in both his own, and that it is true: Loki is wicked, and a betrayer. He lets go, and watches Loki sit down cross-legged on the ground, his back resting against one of the support beams for the door.

Thor stands there a moment, as Loki watches him, chin tilted up and eyes bright with amusement at his discomfort, lashes thick and dark. Thor pauses, strangely bereft, then sits down on the other side of the door.

"You are well?" he says. His hand still feels gritty from touching the leash, and he rubs his palm against his trouser leg.

Loki doesn't answer. Thor looks over. Loki is staring up, past the overhang of the roof, at the sky half-lit and the bright-moon shining high above them, nearly full.

"I passed down a judgement this week," Thor says, "and I think it was wrong. Snæbjorn and Snækoll, Stóði, and Kuggi, arguing over cattle."

Loki leans his head back against the door frame, closes his eyes. His hands are palm-up on his knees, the chain dipping between his thighs.

"Well?" he says.

Thor swallows. "I had them each write down what he believed the others owed him, and halved the difference, in favor of the claimant."

Loki huffs out something that is almost a laugh. "That's not what the law says to do."

Thor shrugs. "I did not think it was."

"And you didn't bother to look it up."

"No," Thor says. The law books are in formal language, which he dislikes at the best of times; but they are also handwritten, and he has not the patience for that.

Loki laughs at him, not kindly, but mercifully short. 

"I know that it has not – endeared me to any of them," Thor says finally, "but I did not know what to do. To be fair."

Loki smiles faintly. It is honest, uncomplicated. His eyes are still closed. 

Völund opens the door. "Horse-mother, get in," he says, and Loki is silent. Thor feels struck in the gut.

Loki has fought – Thor does not know how many duels Loki has fought, since he came of age to do so. His sorcery came to him early, before he was of age; and he was fighting scraps with the boys at Court over it before he could answer with holmgang at the slight to his honor. 

Thor is known to have a temper, yes, but he is not the one who fought a duel a year for most of two centuries. Loki has never lost, and never not answered those who called him nithing. 

For him to be silent, now…

Thor stands. "If my brother will not challenge your lie, I shall."

Loki's hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "Come off it, Thor," he says. "I'm barred by law from offering challenge, and having you do it on my behalf is worse."

He steps back. Völund is the coward, calling insults at a man who is not permitted to answer. Loki is many things – fond of married women, vicious in anger, curious past sense – but he is not that.

"Good night," he says, and goes to his horse, and back to the city. The sun is rising when he arrives, and unable to bear the thought of Father's disappointment, he goes to sleep.

When he wakes, he goes to training, and finds the Warriors Three there, but not Sif.

After a short bout with Hogun, he sits down beside Fandral, who is resting, and begins stretching his shoulders, using Mjölnir's weight to help.

"Where is Sif?" he asks.

Fandral turns his hands palm-out, raising them. "I'm not sure," he says. "Something about her father."

That could be any of a number of things, but rarely good. Sif is sworn in service at Court; for her to leave would require permission from either him or his father. Thor was not here at all, so it must have been his father, and for his father to grant Sif permission to leave it must have been truly urgent.

+++

Sif's return is not under the circumstances anyone might have wished: it is with her father and a handful of guards, as well.

Sigfuss kneels before the throne and when asked why he has come, he says, "Elven refugees come into my lands: at first a handful, and now by the dozens."

Sif's ancestral lands are heavily forested: that the Elves would choose to flee there, where the climate is as close to their own as may be found in Asgard, is no surprise.

"Why do they seek asylum?" 

"They say that they are being chased from their lands by the Dwarves," Sigfuss says. "They have set up camps in the forest, and more of their kind join them each day – I have not been able to find, let alone close, the portal through which they come."

Thor glances at Sif. Her head is still bowed, in the row of kneeling guards. She is not her father's heir – that is her younger brother, Sigfast, who is still at the domain. Sigfast is not a man yet, and has never been to Court.

Father sits back on his throne, silent for a long moment. "I had thought the talks were going well," he says, mostly to himself. "But I see now that was foolishness. 

"If they have a leader, have him sent to me. I wish to hear from them what they are fleeing, more precisely."

After the audience, Thor finds Sif; she is speaking in low tones with her father's guards, giving them orders, and he waits for her to finish before catching her attention.

"I am glad you have returned," he says. He wishes to embrace her, to show his relief, but she does not welcome such gestures at Court.

She frowns. "I must return to my father's lands before the week is out to help direct our efforts to supply the refugees. There are already reports of theft from the holds nearest the refugee camps; if they are not provided for, and provided with options for self-support, then the problem will grow worse."

"Of course," he says. "It is good to see you again. If you have need of anything…"

Her face softens. "Of course," she says, and clasps his elbow in her hand.

+++

The refugees' leader is a tall woman, hollow-eyed, with the slow rolling gait of those more used to forest tracking than to marble and gold floors.

In a small audience chamber, away from the envoys from Alfheim's respective peoples, Sif standing at her shoulder, she tells Father how her town came to flee to Asgard.

"They live under the ground, and have no need of the things above it," she begins, her hands clasped tight in her robes, "So when they wished to drive us out they set fire to our trees, and burned us out." She nods. "When I was summoned here, we were three towns, burned, and I think there has been another since I left."

"And you did not go to your district judge?" Father asks. Thor had not realized they had such things. 

She scoffs. "What could he do? The forests of our district are full with their own people, and what could we offer them? Besides, the Dwarves would strike their towns next, trying to burn us away, and Khams has no fighters to spare, with all the war-folk already gone to where the army called them, and the rest of us left only civilians and farmers." She sneers. "Not like Dwarves, with a hive-queen and their barren soldier-unwomen their only citizens!" 

Father sits back. "How many are you?"

"One hundred ten left of my town, children included, and I suppose including the others we'd be between three and five hundred. Annoor was larger than the other nearby villages. But I couldn't swear to it - we have no census, and with no supplies coming in but what Your Majesty sent with the local fief, there've been those who'd rather take their chances wandering than staying with the rest of us."

Thor breathes. Thinks, _Elf bandits in Sigfuss's lands _. As Loki would put it, _Not ideal.___

__Thor is struck by a wave of long-familiar loss, and then the sudden stark joy of memory at Loki being once again near, if no longer in their childhood home._ _

__"You shall have a meeting with my wife's staff tomorrow. Tell them what supplies you need - food, bedding, the like - and we will do what we may," Odin says heavily._ _

__"Thank you, sire," she says, bowing, her robes a swirl around her, and the guards see her out._ _

__"They will need goats, for the milk - Sif says there are many children," Thor tries, and Odin nods._ _

__"Better than to have mothers with milk and no children. Since Sif is your companion -" and Thor isn't sure of the note to Father's voice; it is the word he uses for all of them, Sif and the Warriors Three, but Father has never entirely accepted Sif's presence at Court, or has never quite believed that she and Thor are not lovers. "You should accompany the supplies, and treat with them. It will show both of them the seriousness with which we treat the displacement of innocents."_ _

__Thor nods. "Yes, Father."_ _

__+++_ _

__The ambassador from the Dwarves is less than pleased._ _

__"Your Highness," she says, when she catches Thor in the halls, "You must speak to your father the King: those refugees to whom he is giving succor in the west are liars; their lands have not been burned, or if they were, it was not the doing of Dwarves. What reason would we have to do so? They live in another world entire, and their existence there harms us not. It is that they want to be able to mine the jewels and ores that are our specialty, and the trade of which are the lifeblood of our colonies." Her whiskers wiggle faintly with emotion, or perhaps from sniffing him; Dwarves have poor sight, from being always in the subterranean gloom. "If they persuade you to drive us out, they will come and work the mines that are rightfully ours, by the treaties the Vanir brokered ten centuries gone."_ _

__Thor licks his lips. "Milady ambassador, if you have aught to say to my father, say it to him direct," he says, old training. This is not the first time that those seeking something have thought to seek influence through him, rather than the proper appeals._ _

__Her eyebrows rise. "You will not go to the destroyed villages, and seek out the truth? With your brother's skills you would know well who had set those fires, and from there it will be easy enough to know why."_ _

__Thor swallows. "My brother and his skills are no business to you. Good day." He makes himself walk away, though it rankles._ _

__+++_ _

__So he goes to the refugee camp, accompanied by Sif, Sigfuss's guards, and the supply train guards. It is a few days' journey, but an easy one; Sif's father's lands are mostly forested, and the route has decent roads and few hills._ _

__The refugee camps are not laid out well, though latrines have been set up, and there is a stream nearby for fresh water, though Sif tells him in an undertone that downstream of the camps lie at least two towns who depend on it for fresh water, and while washing clothes is becoming an issue, drinking water will be one much sooner. Seeing it, Thor can well imagine it, and he feels his jaw clench._ _

__The children seem relatively well-fed, though the adults eye the supply train with undisguised relief, and as the supplies are handed over to the cobbled-together council, Thor is glad that they arrived as quickly as they did._ _

__He plays with some of the Elf-children, their voices high and fluting in their foreign accents at first, then growing familiar as he adjusts to their language. Like Asgardian children, they enjoy trying to move Mjölnir, and he enjoys watching their play, though he spends much of his time helping to set up temporary shelters._ _

__A few children have burn scars on their faces or hands, as do the adults, and that angers him: arson is cowardice. To destroy a community's homes and property, rather than stealing it, is a merchant's crime, and a vicious one at that. It is cowardice to strike at children and women, rather than just to take out one's anger in honest battle on the menfolk._ _

__Thor does not ask the children what the fires were like, nor the adults, but the ambassador's words still eat at him. That the fires were set by Elves, not Dwarves. No sane being would hurt young of its own kind like he can see written on those burn-scars. But - what could the Dwarves have, by running the Elves of these towns away? They want nothing from aboveground._ _

__After a little more than a week, he begins the trip back to Court - this time with Sif as well - and on the second night of the journey, he mentions the conversation to her._ _

__She watches the fire for a moment, then says, "Have you looked on a map, to see where the refugees are from?" she asks finally._ _

__"Yes." He sketches an image of it in the air. "In a loose ring around a mountain, and not every town near it. Five spared, five set to the torch."_ _

__"And not in a row," she says, "Not as though they planned more. For the picture of it, or something similar." She licks her lips, uneasy. "They all blame a Dwarf colony in the mountain, but..."_ _

__"The Dwarf maps list no colony there," Thor agrees._ _

__They stare into the fire for long moments, and then Thor looks out into the moonlit night. This close to the summer, with the bright-moon high in the sky, he's barely even night-blind from it._ _

__"It feels like a thing with Loki's touch," he murmurs, "but it can't be; how would he treat with any creature long enough to plan such a thing? Having been first imprisoned, and then in Völund's watch, and before that in alien lands far from the nine realms."_ _

__"I know," she says softly, "but there are others with his taste for dramatics who bear more ill will towards Elves, or Dwarves, or both."_ _

__"I cannot but think that the Elves being refugees to Asgard, rather than to each other’s forests, or to anywhere else, is part of it," he says, slowly. "That Father was already being asked to judge a dispute between them seems...suspicious."_ _

__"Or it is that they know they can depend on Asgard's mercy, and Jotunheim and Niflheim are inhospitable to their kind." Sif smiles tightly at him from across the fire, a loose, lank lock of dark hair spilling against her cheek. It has been days since either of them has had a bath. "If your father had known Loki's exile would turn your thoughts to his suspiciousness and opinions of politics, perhaps he would have been sent away to the country sooner."_ _

__She means it as a jest, but it stings anyway. Thor did not think like this before he learned of Loki's treachery, but he did not need to - he had never imagined that those he loved and trusted would betray him. He had always known that they could, but..._ _

__He swallows. "Despite all his crimes, I do miss his presence. When I thought him loyal, and even now that I know he was not." His chest burns. "I am sorry. I know you are not fond of him. But he is my brother, and we..." He closes his hands, feeling empty. "We are close enough in age to have been mistaken for twins, when we were small, and we enjoyed that fiction. How could we not have, believing ourselves to have woken from the same mother's womb? We shared a bed until we outgrew it, and wore each other’s clothes as long as they fit, and fought for the same parents' attention. All of this you know."_ _

__"Yes," she says, "But he is not your flesh and blood, for all you were raised to think he was. He would not be worthy of it, even if he were, for what he has done. That you love him still is..." Her breath brushes a spark out of its path. "It shows the scope of your heart, but it says too much of mercy within you."_ _

__"Would you still love your father if he had chased the refugees from his lands?" Thor asks, and Sif snorts._ _

__"I do not love my father well, even as we are," she says. She casts a hand out, palm-up. "He says, 'If the Prince will not have you to wife, what good is your being at Court where they all think you are his paramour? Come back and let me arrange you a suitable match – there are other lords who appreciate warriors.'" She snorts. "'Appreciate warriors'. The way Dagvið Fornisson appreciated warriors, perhaps."_ _

__Thor chuckles. Dagvið was argr, and his father's heir; he had tried to seduce Kuggi, and been defeated in combat. His sentence was lesser outlawry, in light of his rank and his service to the crown. He's probably in Vanaheim, where they have more permissive views. Thor does not think of him often, though he had seemed a fine warrior, and it was regrettable to learn that he was unfit for service._ _

__"Better not to marry such a man," Thor agrees. Sif's eyes are bright with the fire's glow as she meets his gaze._ _

__"No," she agrees. "Better to die my own woman, than marry a man who will not let me be myself." She bows faintly. "I am grateful that being in your service has allowed me that liberty."_ _

__Thor nods. "You are one of the best, if not the best. It would be foolish of me not to ask to retain you in my service. The least I can do would be to support your choice to stay at my side."_ _

She bows again, a little deeper, but says nothing. What is there to say? That he had thought to propose marriage to her, once, but that his mother had said to him, _What do you want in a wife?_ and then said, _And could Sif give you that, and happily, while still being herself?_ he had realized that it would be wrong to ask, and had held his tongue. 

__He loves her. She is the steadiest thing in his life, always at his right hand, always ready, always competent. As long as she has no wish to wed he will stand behind her in her decision and not allow it to be gainsaid, and the moment she does, he will be ready to make her dowry one of the most generous in all of Asgard._ _

__In the meantime, he is watchful of her fists and of the quickness of her blade._ _

__"I am for bed," he says finally, standing. "Good night."_ _

__"Good night," she says softly._ _

__+++_ _

__Near the capital, there are several branches to the road; one into the city walls, two around its perimeter to each side. The perimeter roads lead to branchings off in the cardinal directions, which branch again further from the city._ _

__It would be a small thing, to separate himself from the rest of the group, and go to Völund's forge for a few hours. Just long enough to speak with Loki, and hear his thoughts on the problem. Seeing as how it has the feel of a thing he would devise._ _

__He goes without telling Sif. It will be quick._ _


	2. Chapter 2

When he arrives, the forge-house is rolling out heat, hotter yet than the weather, and the bright-moon glows heavy in the sky, seeming nearer than usual, hanging comfort before and behind him. He is half-tempted to attempt flying up to it on Mjölnir's strength, but at least his lessons managed to drill into him the awareness that that would be entirely foolish.

Through the open wall of the forge, he can see a horse, and a man, kneeling at its feet to examine the shoes -

Loki barely looks himself, outlined in the fire's brightness, shoulders broadened from the forge-work. Thor pauses, watching as Loki presses at the horse's legs, hands gentle and checking for injury. Loki has always had a good hand with animals; they turn gentle to him, and obey his commands.

Loki pats the horse's shin, then unfolds to standing, and Thor's breath catches for a moment - Loki's strength wrought into his body, all the height of him, being remade by the forge-work into something different and, perhaps, better. 

Loki calls out, "Thor! How good of you to join us. Come here and hold the horse's leg for me, so I can reshoe her."

"I thought Völund did not shoe horses," Thor says, entering, and making sure he is in the horse's sight and his scent within her nostrils.

"He doesn't," Loki agrees, easily enough, as Thor persuades the mare to pick up her hoof.

The horse's owner is watching them both, eyes wide, but Thor's hands are full of animal, so instead he looks up and nods his head in the man's direction as acknowledgement.

"Brother," he says, for Loki is doing some obscure thing at the forge, with rattling metal and crackling fire, "you have not introduced me to your customer." 

"After all I have done, you still call me brother," Loki says, half-wondering and half-mocking. "Master butcher Arnbjörn Helgasson, I have the dubious pleasure of introducing to you the fool who insists on calling me brother, Thor Odinsson."

"I am glad to make your acquaintance," Thor says.

"Your Royal Highness," Arnbjörn mutters, red-faced. Thor would clap him on the back, but the horse would put her foot down, and Loki would not be best pleased with him.

Loki pulls a horseshoe, cherry-bright, out of the fire, quenches it a touch, and sets it on the mare's hoof. Thor can feel the heat radiating from it, greater even than the ambient smothering warmth of the forge. As he feels the first drop of sweat gather and begin to roll from his forehead, he sees Loki, bent over beside him, sheened with sweat, shirt clinging to his chest. Loki has heavy gloves on his hands, tied-back hair grown half-again longer than he once preferred it, and Thor's whole body tightens. 

Loki looks now as he never has before: solid, a fighter, strong and quick and skilled enough to be a challenge even to Thor in the practice ring.

He looks away. Beneath those gloves Loki is wearing lodestone bands that dispel his magic; he is wicked, and prefers cleverness to bravery, prefers winning to honorable fighting, for all that he's strong enough to win honorably if he chooses. He's responsible for the deaths of thirty thousand Midgardians, and the wounds of fifteen thousand more, and has no regret for it. By adoption he is a fratricide and by blood a patricide, and by his own choice an attempted genocide. His crimes are too many to forgive, and Thor loves him still despite them.

Perhaps that makes Thor the mad one. 

Loki takes the shoe away, puts it back in the fire, shapes it some more. Quenches it fully, and takes his gloves off. His arms are peppered with burn-blisters. He picks up a handful of nails and spills them onto the lodestone at his wrist, where they hold.

Thor can't breathe for the heat. Loki's wrists heavy with iron is compelling enough; knowing it to be lodestone is - 

He tightens his hands on the mare's shin, to keep from grabbing Loki's arm to feel the bones of his wrist, the metal against his skin.

Loki puts the shoe against the hoof, and drives in the nails.

Thor draws in a breath, feeling as though his lungs cannot open wide enough in the thick heat, and stands with his chest heaving as Loki finishes blocking off the nails and rasping the hoof.

When Loki nods, Thor lets go, and the mare puts her hoof down, shaking her head and whinnying. Arnbjörn stands from his seat in the corner and strokes her forehead, a comforting gesture. 

A hand on his shoulder, as gentling as that one, and Thor flinches. Loki's face, when he looks over, is lightly amused, but not unfond, not bitter-cold with disdain.

"That was the last shoe," Loki says, mostly mocking, "and thank you well for coming in time."

Thor shrugs. "I did not come to aid you in your labors."

"No indeed," Loki says. He pulls two excess nails from his cuffs. "I cannot name a single speck of damage you caused in that battle."

"I was not trying to destroy that city and subjugate its inhabitants, and besides I am not the one guilty of fratricide."

Loki wrinkles his nose. "It wasn't permanent; I can't see why you wouldn't return the favor. At any rate, why are you here? I don't suppose I'm lucky enough that it's to do with the Elves who've set up camp in Sif's pretty forests, and not," he sweeps Thor with a look, "from missing me."

"It is related," Thor admits, "but not as you might think."

Loki raises his eyebrows. "Oh, do tell."

"The Elves are being driven from their towns by fire, and they insist that Dwarves are setting them. But it makes no sense for the Dwarves to drive them out: what gain would there be?"

A breath, and Loki does not look away, nor make any move to interrupt, so Thor continues.

"So far five towns have been burned. Sif and I looked at a map and we noticed that all five are part of a rough ring of villages lying around a mountain - but in every other space, not half, nor in any other pattern. And though they claim it was done by Dwarves, there is no colony shown on any Dwarf map of the mountain."

Loki tilts his chin, looking past Thor, and that breaks the tension between them. Thor relaxes - when had he drawn his shoulders back so far, and pulled his height up to give himself authority? - and shifts his weight back on his heels.

Loki moves aside, going to the pile of coal and shoveling some into the back of the forge, stoking the fire.

"Well?" Thor asks, once Loki has pushed the bellows a few times.

"I heard no question," Loki says.

"What do you make of it?"

"I make nothing of it. Oh," he smiles, cruel, "did you expect me to laugh and explain that it was part of some plot I had constructed in captivity to ruin Asgard and humiliate you utterly before your warriors and Odin?"

Thor flushes. He had half-expected it, and hearing Loki mock him is - infuriating, and embarrassing. He wants nothing more than to take the edge from Loki's smiles, to be able to believe in his goodwill, again.

"Regrettably not," Loki says, "and no, I will not help you puzzle it out. Not unless," he turns his hands palm-up, emphasizing the manacles and the chain between them, "you will also strike me of these, and bring me along with you to Alfheim." His smile is as it always is when he tempts Thor into some mischief, intimate and a little wild, and Thor smiles back, reflexive, shaking his head.

"You know I will not," Thor says.

Loki is still smiling, the one that includes Thor on the joke, as he lets his hands fall. "But the last time you took me along on one of your adventures it went so well."

Thor can't tell whether or not that was sarcastic. He can't even tell if it was meant to be funny. The few times he has thought of Loki falling through the void, or in the hold of those strange creatures he let into Midgard, his thoughts shy away from it, and he has not wanted to ask. If they tortured Loki, Loki would say they had not, to prevent pity from falling upon him.

"It was not so in my own view," Thor says finally, "but you are contrary enough to have enjoyed all of it, and I can hardly begrudge you it." He cups the back of Loki's neck, feeling the warmth of his skin, the slick smear of sweat, and the rasp of his hair against the back of his hand. Loki does not move away, and Thor thinks for a moment of drawing him closer yet, of pressing them together as though to meld their flesh and their blood to make one being.

Before they knew of Loki's parentage, he thought it was the hunger of their shared blood and the opposition of their natures conflicting, trying to make a single whole balanced person, one without their faults or their fights. Now...he swallows and lets Loki go, his hand sliding down Loki's bicep, feeling the swell of muscle beneath his skin, before dropping to his side.

His forearm brushes Mjölnir, a comforting thrum of energy; she feels half as though she is humming lullabies to him. Loki's eyes are wide, his pupils swollen with the half-darkness, and Thor wants to - he wants to know that Loki knows him, and to know enough of Loki to trust him again.

"To your detriment," Loki murmurs, voice thick, "I have no need of your approval for all of my pleasures." He turns away, and takes up a block of iron, setting it in the forge.

"I'm making nails," Loki says tartly, "it you want to watch, you may, but you may as well go."

"I have something to ask of Völund," Thor says, and Loki laughs, sharp and bitter.

"If you mean to ask him if you may take me in my cuffs to Alfheim, don't bother. And if you intend to steal me away from the punishment even you advocated..." His smile curls, unkind.

Thor nods. "Even you admitted your own guilt; I would that you serve your sentence." He licks his lips. "Have you any suggestions for things to bring to Alfheim in your absence?"

Loki rolls his eyes. "Good sense. A light. A shovel. And some matches."

Thor inclines his head. "Thank you, brother."

"Let's not part on that note," Loki sighs. "You do know my name."

"You are still my brother, though you deny it," Thor says, trying for mild and knowing it comes out bullish. "But I am glad of your aid, if it is given in good faith."

"You know the answer to that. Good night, Thor." Loki waves a dismissive hand and pulls the gloves back on.

+++

This time, he goes to Father before he goes into the lands of others, and every moment he spends waiting in Father's receiving chamber he spends thinking of that journey, not so long ago, that was the beginning of things, or perhaps the end. Loki would say it was both and neither, but Thor isn't so sure. Actions are discrete, and once done cannot be undone. This change between them was not irrevocable until then.

Father listens to his request for permission to examine the sites, then nods, slowly, and says, "I must ask the permission of the High Judge and Queen of those lands. Wait a few days for their response."

He bows his head, fist over his heart. "And if they do not give permission?"

"Then you will go charging into their lands as you went into Jotunheim?" Father looks at him heavily. "You have little enough good will from other worlds to spend it to small purpose. It is a reasonable request; I do not think they will refuse."

_Besides,_ Thor thinks, _you are the arbiter of their feud, and the Allfather besides; that is power enough to make them fear you,_ and then is shocked with himself; it was a thought worthy of Loki, and no little bitter as well.

"Thank you, Father," he says, and leaves at his father's nod of dismissal.

He finds Sif with the Warriors Three, in their usual chamber. The fire is at mid-height, the room warm with what must be at least a few hours of its brightness, and the remains of food-trays worth at least two meals are discarded on a side table.

They stand when he enters the room; he claps Fandral on the shoulder and slaps Volstagg's belly, and he and Hogun clasp each other's elbows, but Sif stands apart from him, nearly frowning.

"You went from the retinue we knew not where, and with no warning," she says carefully. "You went to see Loki."

What use would there be in lying to her? "I did."

Volstagg's smile of welcome fades. "Thor, you must know that Loki cannot be trusted."

"He tried to kill you," Fandral continues.

Hogun snorts. "And succeeded."

"And if you believe that the fact you woke again from it by your father's magic excuses him from blame..." Sif's hands are tight against his upper arms. 

"I do know," Thor says, too-aware of their gazes, the remains of their fear from watching him fall. "I do not forget what he has done. But this strangeness is not unlike him, and I thought he might be able to provide some hint."

Fandral licks his lips, uneasy, as though to make better room for the words that follow. "How could you trust any hint he gave you, or know that his claims of ignorance were true?"

Thor swallows down the anger that rises within him. They speak reason; that it is reason means that his anger is the more foolish. "I do not. I can only presume upon my knowledge of him, and the knowledge that perhaps, if we had accorded him more credit for those skills he did have, suspect as they are, then perhaps he would not have turned them against us. That he can be returned to us, at least in some measure, by understanding and kindness." 

"This is your love for him speaking," Sif says, her eyes narrow and her lips tight around the words. "You would not say that if he were aught else to you."

Hogun rests a hand on his shoulder, not unkindly. Hogun, too, though he has told Thor little of how he came to be at Court, has said enough for Thor to know he lives under the sorrow of kin-treachery. "You cannot change him," he says carefully, "But you may show him what he would gain if he changed. If you think you can, and if he is willing."

Thor feels burnt, his emotions over-tender. First Loki's strangeness, and then this. 

"Thank you, my friends." He meets all of their eyes. "I will think on what you have said. In the meantime, we may be sent to Alfheim, to investigate the fires' cause, should the Elf-Judge and the Dwarf Queen have no objections."

Volstagg grins. "A fine adventure! I shall hope we are granted leave to go."

"Hear, hear," Fandral agrees, taking a drinking horn from Hogun's hand and draining it, to Hogun's clear disgruntlement.

+++

The Elves and Dwarves do, after token protest, agree to allow Thor, the Warriors Three, and a few guards to go look at the sites of the former towns, as long as they are accompanied by a few judges and warriors of the Elves, and some Dwarven drones. Thor accepts this - so none may argue with events after the fact - and makes ready.

The Bifrost sets them down near the Elven capital, and from there, they ride to the mountain. The air is thick with the taste of ash, and they all breathe lightly through wet cloths tied over their mouths. The strain for breath enough reminds his body of combat, so his hands are constantly seeking Mjölnir's comforting heft or the weight of the dagger at his other hip.

If Loki were here, he would have made castings of the remains of the villages, or sent ahead his senses to seek out living creatures and warn them. Thor is at once glad to be gone of him, and misses the advantage of a sorcerer's powers. It is not a common talent, sorcery, and less so among men; that his own brother should have had it was... did Father know, when he took Loki from Jotunheim? 

The tree-homes are all toppled, molten metal and ash beneath their feet. The ground is littered with half-burned trunks and walls, and surveying the ruin, Thor can think of nothing that this reveals to him.

"What say you?" he asks the Warriors Three. "What do you see?"

Hogun swallows, looking past him. "The village burned from the ground up. The trees were toppled, not burning down. Or the flames consumed them from the bottom up."

"And there are trees over there that are dying," Fandral continues, turning his head in a nod towards a copse of trees not far from the destruction. "Evergreens don't look like that." The needles are all near-gone, swept away, though none seem to be burned.

Volstagg nods, and bends down, brushing his fingers through the coating of ash. He frowns. "Strange..."

He brushes aside some of the dust, and beneath it, the ground is black and stone-hard.

One of the Dwarves hisses. "Basalt," she says, going to her knees, throwing her beard over her shoulder. "From cooled lava. These fires were not caused by Dwarven work. As the Elves should have known." She bares her teeth at the group of Elves, who are frowning darkly back at her. 

So this is how the town was burned down. By nature, not the hand of any being. Perhaps it will serve to help cool the tensions between them.

Thor stands. "Are you both satisfied with this explanation for the burning of this town?"

The Elves and Dwarves speak among themselves for a moment, and then look at each other and nod.

"For this one," says the leader of the group of Elves.

+++

The other towns are much the same, though there is something about the third that makes Thor uneasy, so he requests that they return to it.

Standing in what would have been beneath the central ring of the town, Thor cannot quite see what was so strange to him before. Something of the remains? Something of the smell?

"These trees burned from the top," says the Elves' leader, jaw tight. "That's what's different. I can't believe I didn't see it before. This fire started inside the town."

"So not from lava?" Volstagg prompts. 

She huffs. "Not likely."

The Dwarves are all tight with anger, though the Elves have said nothing yet to accuse them anew of starting this fire.

"Was this the first or the last town to burn, I wonder?" Fandral murmurs. 

"The third," Thor reminds him, and his face twists.

The Dwarf party's leader stands up from examining the dirt and turns to the Elves. "What was different about this town before it burned?" 

One of the more junior Elves steps forward after a moment. "The only smith on this side of the mountain lived here," he says. "A'leif, he's called. He was trained by Dwarves."

"Was there a forge elsewhere that was also burned?"

The Elf thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. "I don't think so. No, that one's intact, and Authmann learned his craft from another Elf, so he's not credited with having work as fine."

Thor exhales. "What did he keep in this forge? That would be unique or valuable."

The Elf shrugs. "I do not know. I am from another of the burned towns, on the other side of the mountain."

Thor breathes out. "Who would know? His wife? A sibling or child?"

"He died, in the fire. That much I know, from the way we have none in the camp who can mend our broken iron things."

He will have to remember that, and see to it that Sif and her father are aware; the woman speaking for the refugees hadn't mentioned it.

"It could be happenstance," Fandral says uneasily.

"But if so, why would it have been part of a series of burned buildings?" points out the lead Elf.

Thor paces around the remains of the trees, then climbs the ladder carved into one of the trunks, to look at things from a higher vantage point.

There, on the mountain side of the town, is a cave, and there are scorch marks on the stone floor. Not ash, just scorch marks.

He lets himself down, pacing over to the cave.

"Why is there no Dwarf colony in the mountain?" he asks finally.

The lead Dwarf frowns. "It's a dormant volcano," she says. "It's uninhabitable, as are most of the tunnels."

"Is there anything special about this mountain?"

"Not to my knowledge."

Something scorched the floor of the cave but left no dust, or intact parts. Unless a wind blows through the cave entrance, and would blow away the detritus but not the marks.

His hand rests easier against Mjölnir's handle.

"Let's at least check the cave tunnels," he says. Volstagg and Fandral sigh in unison, albeit quietly, but the Dwarves are the ones who take the lead into the tunnels; they have the best vision in darkness.

Twenty, thirty feet in, and Thor is guided only by a faint lantern-stone he thought to bring on Loki's advice. The Dwarves need no light; their beards and fine noses and ears allow them to sense the world around them. 

Finally, long after Thor has become drenched with sweat and the Elves are panting with the heat, they stop moving. Ahead of them, the Dwarves mutter among themselves, then the leader turns around.

"We can go no further," she says. "Ahead it will only grow hotter, for it falls closer to the magma. I see no clues to what burned the village, not yet, but I would bring in some of our cooling bellows before saying definitively what happened. This party would be welcome as our esteemed guests." Thor imagines that she nods, though he can't make it out.

"We should discuss it with higher judges," demurs the ranking Elf. "Let us return to the surface, discuss matters, and return."

+++

It will be days before the tunnels are cooled enough to enter, so Thor takes a respite in the nearest fortified town, passing through their markets and drinking the wines and ales the town has to offer. Elves for the most part do not eat meat, so they live on vegetables and grains, though you would hardly know from the intensity of the flavors.

He thinks of Loki much, pondering why a smith's house would be the difference between the burned towns. Unless it was something else, one of the inhabitants perhaps. Has there been a tally done in the refugee camp to see who is still alive from each town? He did not think to, but that would be something that Sif might consider. He will ask when he returns.

The few days pass, and the tunnel is made navigable. The message comes finally that they are ready to go some distance further, and if he would please arrive in three days, they would be prepared to welcome him and his companions.

The morning of, Thor and the Warriors Three arrive at the town, and find a crew of dusty Dwarves waiting, their faces - what is visible beneath their beards - grimly set, and a few have scrapes, or splints.

"The tunnel caved in," says the lead Dwarf. "Our engineers are examining their work to see what went wrong. No one was trapped, for once, but it is still concerning. It will be at least two weeks to clear the rubble and set up new equipment."

Thor glances at the Warriors Three. Volstagg has slumped in his seat and is looking at the bracelet which his wife had fashioned for him, in gold, with particularly fine knotwork. He must miss her, though he has been away for longer spans before.

"Very well," Thor agrees. "I cannot be gone long from my duties in Asgard, so I will return in a fortnight, should I receive no word forbidding it."

"So be it agreed," says the Dwarves' leader, and so they go.

+++

Loki's face, when he comes again to the forge at the end of his first week back, is bright with what can only be sardonic amusement, and Thor braces himself for something cutting.

"How goes the enquiry into the mysterious fires?" Loki asks, and Thor mentally uncurls his shoulders from readiness for the strike that did not come.

"It has been delayed by the cooling system falling apart."

Loki's eyebrows rise. "My, you did find something interesting. I'd expected you to have dismissed it all as Dwarven malice and been done."

"It was not," Thor says, stung and proud at once. He rests his hand on the back of Loki's neck, feeling his sweat from the forge-fire and the closeness of Midsummer. "I think you will like this strangeness, and find it to your taste."

Loki's smile widens, just a touch. "It would be more interesting than the endless games of dice that Völund attempts to entice me with."

Thor can't help laughing. Loki has no luck with games of chance, none whatsoever; he won dice games at Court regularly because he is an extraordinary cheat, and because he is good at talking himself out of losses.

"You would think so," he says, and tows Loki in until he can bend to rest his forehead against his brother's. Loki smells of forge-smoke and sweat and the thick stink of metal.

"I have duties, you know," Loki says softly, not sounding eager to go. "Nails to make. Scissor blades to shape."

"Go, then," Thor says, "and I will tell you what we found in Alfheim."

"You will tell everything wrong-way round and forget the important parts," Loki says, and pulls away. Thor's palm is slick with his sweat, and he himself is beginning to feel sticky. 

"Of the five towns burned," he begins, "four were burned by lava coming up too close in the soil, and one was burned from above, by we know not what."

Loki makes a noise, but says nothing, so Thor continues.

When he reaches the part of the tale about the third town having had a smith, Loki hums.

"I know that name. He came here once, asking for I know not what; he and Völund were speaking in confidence and I was working at the anvil and couldn't listen in." He shrugs. "I couldn't tell you what he wanted, and I didn't see if Völund gave him anything, let alone what it was."

"Then it does strike you as suspicious."

Loki makes a small horizontal wave with his right hand, a gesture of ambivalence that is as familiar to Thor as the tilt of his smiles and the sound of his gait, but made strange by the cuffs cutting it short. "It's an irregularity that fills in a pattern. You're a fool if it doesn't concern you."

Loki's hands are bound to the base of the forge by a medium-length chain attached to a bolt in the stone; it gives him distance enough to work but not enough to leave the building. Thor brushes a hand against one of the links and sits on the bench against the wall, beneath the racks of tools. "Where is Völund? I would ask him."

Loki sits beside him. "Visiting his wife."

"He is married?" Thor had not realized; he has seen no signs of a woman's presence in the house, and Loki had said nothing of her before. Maidens he flirts with, but his preference is for married women, over even widows: _You have not truly tested yourself, he said once, until you have talked your way out of the cuckolded husband killing you, and into sharing his ale with you as well._ And he had leaned back in his chair, self-satisfied, and Thor had confided about how this girl or that had allowed him one liberty or another, but he had gone not yet so far as to bed them, for fear of siring a bastard and so ruining her.

Loki had snorted. _Another thing I don't have to worry about,_ he'd said, and Thor had not understood until later that he meant both that the bastard might be raised as the husband's child, and that Loki had the means to stop a child growing at all.

"She's dead," Loki says easily. Thor swallows.

"How?"

Raised eyebrows. "Murder, if you must know. By the hand of a dissatisfied patron of his."

It would have had to be a great dissatisfaction, and a cowardly man, to do such a thing. "Was he tried for his crime?"

Loki smiles, slow and wicked. "He was beyond the reach of Asgardian justice. A Jotun, you know."

Thor does not trust that look, but cannot think why Loki would be so pleased. "What was the item he made, that did not meet expectations?"

Loki's smile widens. "What Jotun would dare come into the lands of his ancestral enemies, and dare further to kill the wife of a well-regarded smith?"

Thor shakes his head. "Do you know what A'leif wanted, or do you not?"

Loki reaches to cradle Thor's face in one blunt-fingered hand. "I have my suspicions," he says, and slides his hand down the side of Thor's neck, coming to rest over the arch at the base. His palm is warm, his joints by turns smooth with blistering and rough with growing callous.

"What are they?"

"I wouldn't want to mislead you."

He seizes Loki by the back of the neck, draws him sharply close, until they cannot look at each other without going cross-eyed.

"Either tell me what you think, brother, or do not. I do not care for games when the cost of ignorance is innocents' deaths."

Loki gasps out a laugh, hand sliding back to take hold of a clump of Thor's hair and pull it down, baring his throat. Thor goes, pulling Loki with him and then pushing him to land below Thor on the stone floor.

Loki is grinning, teeth bared and his whole body loose with combat-readiness. They have been at this game since they were even too young to walk, this favored familiar rhythm of their bodies' striving.

Thor presses a quick punch into Loki's ribs, to make him tense, and then seeks his elbow, the better hand to lock him, the advantage of his greater weight - Loki writhes out of his attempted pin and presses some point at Thor's wrists that makes him near blind to all but the pain, and then Thor is the one below, his heels digging into Loki's spine and the heels of Loki's hands low unhappy pressure rising up beneath his ribs.

"Yield," Loki says brightly, and Thor, laughing, takes his elbows so he collapses and then Thor is holding him close, Loki's weight a welcome comfort above him.

"You can't hug me into submission," Loki says, voice muffled into Thor's shoulder.

"I would not dare to try, and anyway I do not mind losing to you in play such as this." Loki's back is warm, his shirt damp with sweat, and Thor strokes him as their breaths slow.

Loki snorts. "You have never lost to me in anything that mattered," he says, pushing against Thor's chest to rise away from him. He stands, looks down at Thor, who stretches, feeling the edges of the floor stones digging into his back, and they look at each other a moment before Loki turns away.

"If the lava is rising to the surface," Loki says, "something must be causing it. It's not just that the forge was burned; it's that even after the forge was burned, the towns continued to burn.

"Oh," he adds, "and I don't think the whatever-it-was was a normal weapon, nor even necessarily a weapon at all. Only named things, powerful forged items, are so valuable and memorable that it's worth burning the forge and killing the smith to cover the theft."

Thor rolls to his feet and smoothes a hand down Loki's back to wipe away some dust from the cloth. "Is that experience talking?"

Loki's shoulders relax. "I didn't always need to kill to take the things I wanted."

Thor flinches, his belly aching. To be struck suddenly with the reminder, after the intimacy of their old roughhousing, was cruel on Loki's part. 

It was crueler of Thor to forget the deaths.

He pushes his shoulders back, and says, "I will leave you to your tasks."

"Many thanks," Loki murmurs, a bitter undertone to it.

+++

When the message comes that the tunnels are clear and properly ventilated, Thor goes, with only Hogun and Fandral. Volstagg's son is feeling unwell, and Thor thinks it better for them to focus on healing, rather than worrying about their father.

Besides, Volstagg's wife is likely exhausted enough from the ones who are healthy, as it is. Three children, each of them only a century or two apart at most. Thor can hardly imagine the indulgence of it, nor the luck required for such fertility. His own parents only had - 

Only had _him_ ; Loki was stolen, another couple's child. That he and Loki are so close in age, less than a century apart, is nearly madness - is nearly twins. He had never met two siblings as close in age as himself and Loki, until he found out they were not blood kin at all. 

The tunnel is less warm this time, naturally, and they make it far enough to see that the tunnels branch.

"This one, to the left," says the lead Dwarf, "Leads into a stone wall after one hundred paces. The other way is more interesting."

They follow that one as well; it leads down, and down, branching again and again - each time with only one path continuing, and the others being closed off - until finally they reach a final branching, past which the cooling equipment has not gone.

"As you see, there's nothing here," the lead Dwarf says.

"I want to see the blocked-off tunnels,” the Elf-chief says - some sort of mid-ranked adjudicator, hair still thick and dark. "To prove that you did not close them yourselves."

The Dwarf sneers. "You'll see."

Behind a façade of rocks cut from the walls, each tunnel is smoothly sealed by a solid stone that feels like sand to the touch but which is hard and cohesive. 

"As you can see, the edges here are sealed from the other side, which we could not have done, and no cooling gear passes through it, as we would need if we were to be on the other side."

Thor presses his fingers to the stone, feeling its natural roughness. He stretches his palm flat against it, and it is warm, but tolerably so. Not hot like the forge where Loki works; only warm as a pottery cup holding hot cider on a cold day. Half a comfort, in this heat.

"Is stone naturally that flat?" muses one of the Elves.

"It can be," the Dwarf snaps.

"But usually isn't."

"No."

"So you did put it here."

"How does this answer the question of who burned the towns?" the lead Elf murmurs, setting a quelling hand on the other's shoulder. "We already know there are no cooling lines in these tunnels, and as they are there is no way for Dwarves to live here. There were no Dwarves rising from these caves to burn the third town. Our question is answered."

"Then how was the town burned?" the younger Elf insists. "A mishap at the forge? You know that wasn't like him."

"Or it was children playing, or someone's cooking oil spattered."

"What is behind those closed-off walls?" Hogun says to the Dwarf, who wiggles her beard in irritation.

"We didn't bother to look, as they were closed off when we arrived and clearly meant we had nothing to do with their creation, so we left them alone. They're irrelevant to our guilt or innocence."

"But even you acknowledge that they could be made by someone's hand."

"We don't work in silt-stone."

"Who does?" Hogun's voice is strangely intense, and suddenly Thor understands. By the dawning horror on the faces of everyone else, so do they.

"But what would fire giants want with this area?"

"The smith here was known to Völund," Thor takes his hand from the wall, wiping the sweat on his palm off on his breeches. "He asked for something, or was given something, not long before the town was destroyed. Perhaps they were looking for it, and for things like it, around here."

"Where did you hear this?" Fandral asks, in a low voice, as everyone falls to frightened chattering.

"Loki."

Fandral snorts. "Better ask a raven how to roast a boar."

Thor flicks his fingers on Fandral's shoulders, to remind him of the birds that sit on Odin's shoulders when he passes formal judgement. "Have a care how you speak of my house." But it was not meant as insult against the house of Odin, only against Loki, and Thor's wisdom in trusting him.

"Your Highness," says the Elf, catching his attention. "If you wouldn't mind looking into what it was the smith wanted, and sent us a message, we would be most grateful."

"I will."

"In the meantime," says the lead Dwarf, "We'll leave the cooling apparatus in place, but until we know what they're possibly after, we'll be blocking the tunnels." She nods at the Elf. "You're free to put your own adjudicator's seal on it, to prove no wrongdoing."

"I will, thank you. I'll also let the other towns know." Her jaw is tight.

They file out of the caves, and Thor calls Heimdall to bring them back. 

Upon their return, he bids farewell to Hogun and Fandral, takes some bread and a small bag of peaches - the trees were a gift from some allies on a world with which Asgard has little contact, but Thor does enjoy the taste - and rides out.

The forge is bright-lit when he arrives, the sun still high and the heat thick. Midsummer is in eight days, less than a week, and the heat is coming on strong. The insects buzz heavily around him, and several bees follow him for a time, seemingly interested in his vambraces, or his cape.

The forge is bright-lit when he arrives; heat shimmers near the door and the open windows, and when he is finally close enough to see inside, Loki is tending the bellows while Völund waits by the anvil. Something must be heating in the forge, for that.

Thor takes one step inside, past the lintel, but no further; Völund nods at him but says nothing.

Loki looks - bored, frankly. The narrow-eyed blank expression on his face is one Thor knows very, very well. The number of times it has presaged bouts of casually brilliant cruelty that ended in either duels or lifelong dislike is, as far as Thor knows, all of them.

That said, the power required for the bellows makes the muscles in Loki's shoulders stand out, the cloth sticking to him and outlining the growing definition, the dips and swells testament to his strength.

Even through the cloth, Loki's arms were smooth beneath his hands, when they roughhoused at his last visit. Would his bare skin feel like that? Touching him, Thor would want to rest his hands on Loki as he moved, to feel all the ways in which he has changed. To use touch to know him again, when words would betray them both.

Völund pulls the item out of the fire with a pair of tongs, checking it, then apparently deems it ready, taking it to the anvil and pounding it quickly into shape. This seems to be the last detail, because he then quenches it and sets it aside.

"Liesmith," Völund says, a new derogatory kenning, and gestures at the open door where Thor stands. 

Loki's eyes flicker to Thor as he stands.

"I would speak with my brother, yes," Thor tells Völund, "but first I have a question to ask of you."

"What is it, then?"

"The town of a smith of your acquaintance in Alfheim, A'leif, was burned down, and he is dead. Loki tells me that not long before, he came to you for something. What was it?"

Völund shakes his head slowly. "There was a sword. Mistilsteinn, it's called. The smith who trained him studied under my master, so we both knew of it."

"What is special about it?"

"It is a good sword, and made of an unusual alloy. Very strong, and resistant to damage, more than most others."

"Not uru?"

Völund shakes his head. "Not uru. Some other." He licks his lips, brushes his hands off on his trousers. "It was forged from metal made from ore gained near his hometown, you know. A good weapon, and worthy of a good hand. If you did not have Mjölnir, it might be even appropriate for yours."

Loki snorts. "There are a thousand fine and enchanted swords vying for the crown prince's hand, just as there are a thousand virtuous and generously dowered women doing the same. Saying one or another is a candidate says more about the one who offers, than about the thing itself." He unties his apron and hangs it from a hook on the wall and comes close enough to Thor to brush his fingers against Mjölnir's head.

He might as well have run a fond hand through Thor's hair, or down the length of his spine. Thor and Mjölnir are near to bonded; her happiness is his, and Loki is his brother. She was sharing it, knowing how he cares.

Thor wants to set a hand at the small of Loki's back, but he is already too far to reach.

Völund nods. "Yes, that is so. But it was a good sword, for a tall man. Not worth killing for, but valuable enough to steal." He smiles faintly. "That is what we spoke of. It was in his possession."

"Who else would have known he had it?" Loki asks. He leans a hip against a work-table, crossing his arms. His shoulders bulk with the movement, and the wool of his breeches outlines the shape of his legs, lean with muscle.

"I wouldn't know," Völund states easily, and sheds his apron. "I'm sure I know nothing more of use to the both of you, so you might as well catch up. Seeing as Your Highness seems to miss his brother. Saying so myself."

Thor doesn't know what to say to that. It's true enough, but Loki's mouth goes flat and his face blanks, never a good sign. Thor can't quite hear the insult, but Loki must have thought it one.

"Aye, and I thank you," Thor says finally.

"So?" Loki says, dropping into a sprawl on the bench, his bound hands palm-up on his thighs. "What did you find?"

"It was fire giants," Thor says, and Loki throws his head back and laughs. It sounds - easy, no note of bitterness at all, and the tendons of his throat are thickly visible, sweat-droplets trailing along them.

Thor swallows, pleased by his brother's amusement, and sits as well.

"That explains everything, you know." Loki's still smiling. "The sword - he says it's not uru, but something else? It's probably adamant." He wiggles his fingers. "Impossible to melt down once properly worked, nearly impossible to find in nature, and made from a local ore. Sounds like adamant to me."

It's also not particularly magically notable, unlike uru, which explains why Loki didn't mention it earlier.

"How do you know?"

"Because adamant is worth a king's ransom," Loki sighs wistfully, "and because the fire giants like it - it will reform properly once cooled, even if it's heat-distorted."

"So the fire giants burned down five towns for an adamant sword, and access to a vein of it?"

"More likely a vein of some alloy that is a part of it." Loki stretches. "I would have liked to have seen it, I think. Mythic weapons are always smaller in person, somehow." His smile is wicked, and Thor doesn't quite know what to do, or to think. That Mjölnir is meant to be borne one-handed is well-known, but her head is heavy enough for any.

"You think the fire giants have taken it, then."

"I couldn't say. You notice the esteemed master smith failed to mention who held the weapon? Were I him - well, I would not avoid questions in the presence of an accomplished liar and cheat, but he clearly has compunctions about lying to his liege lord's heir."

"You think he has it?"

"Or he did."

In his excitement, Thor takes hold of Loki's elbows, pulling him loose-limbed and easy into a hug. "Then the fire giants were foiled."

Loki laughs into Thor's collarbone; it tickles faintly. Thor strokes at the back of his head, Loki's hair fine and a little greasy beneath his fingers.

"They have the ore, not just that blade." Loki's hands smooth over Thor's biceps, down to cradle his hips, thumbs stroking the jut of the bones. "Five towns, at that distance, that's plenty of ore to be digging that far for, don't you think?"

Loki's back is heavy and lovely and perfect beneath his hands; Thor's palm fits easily into the hollows and juts of his spine. "We should look into which combine it is."

Loki presses his palms into Thor's thighs, stretching his back, making impossibly more room for Thor's hands. "You'll have to track them above ground, since they block the tunnels."

"Or get a sorcerer to find the gate they're using," Thor murmurs, kissing Loki's temple, and then, when his chest heaves, at the corner of his eye.

Loki shivers, despite the heat, and slides his hands up under Thor's shirt, pressing the manacles to Thor's sides, a shock of cold in the heat of the forge and each other's skin.

"They would never let it be this one," he says, scornful and breathy, and then they are kissing, open-mouthed, hungry.

Loki this close is intoxicating, his body pressing into Thor's for those few seconds, and then he throws Thor back flat on the bench and, standing, backs away.

"What are you doing!" It's nearly a shriek.

Thor, his back smarting from the impact and his mouth still heavy with the memory of Loki's, says, "We were kissing. It is new, between us, but no -"

"I am no nithing, as all my accusers say, that I am no man, and without honor, and -"

"Loki -"

"I have not, will not let myself be -"

"Loki," Thor snarls, rising up and grabbing Loki by the scruff at the back of his neck, holding him in place by brute strength, "I would only what pleases you. Do you deny that -" he swallows, "that this feels - as if it has been long between us?"

Loki's jaw clenches. "This is your idea."

Thor loosens his grip, but leaves his hand where it is. How had he not noticed how he held Loki close, as though to pull him up for a kiss? "You think it that foolish?"

Loki's mouth curls up into a wry smile, so Thor kisses him, tasting smoke and ash and Loki. His arms are full of his brother's weight, as Loki leans into him, hands on Thor's hips, fingers curving around, and. And Thor is hard, can feel that Loki is as well, and though he has never thought of himself as wanting to - to have a man, it feels right, their bodies answering each other so.

Loki shifts forward, then back, humming faintly in thought, then says, "This won't do." Pushes Thor backwards, following after, and with a neatly-done hip check spills Thor out on the bench where they were just sitting. Pushes Thor's thighs apart and lies down between them, an easy homage to a wrestling guard, but not one at all.

Thor pulls him down for a kiss, rocking up into Loki's weight, and feels Loki relax against him, elbows and forearms heavy on the bench above Thor's shoulders. His lips are rough against Thor's when he leans down to lightly brush their mouths together. Thor tries to rise into it, to deepen it, and Loki pulls away - but the second kiss is heavy, wet, devouring.

Thor brings his knees up, flattening the soles of his boots on the bench, and uses the leverage to move against Loki, who gasps against his mouth, and then - then it is like their wrestling, an easy sort of dance, unfamiliar with newness but like their old ways. That it is this pleasure instead of roughhouse-wrestling...

Loki makes few noises, mostly the sound of his breath, but he feels - graceful, sinuous, against Thor, as though his pleasure is taken the same way, augmented only by Thor stroking his shoulders, or resting at his lower back, wanting to grab hold and urge him on but not quite daring. 

Loki's weight and heat are, are wonderful, his hips opening Thor up to the feeling of them pressed together through their clothes, and the flex of his back beneath Thor's hands as they move, and Thor's pleasure crests, quiet, easy and unexpected. It ripples through him, and in its aftermath he feels - quieted, stilled within, instead of shattered.

Loki hisses out a laugh, still moving. "Rude, to go before me."

"Apologies," Thor shifts, kisses Loki's neck, licks softly at his ear. "Would you have my hand?"

"I would." Loki slows enough that Thor can work his hand down between them, but even the fumbling to get his hand in Loki's trousers is enough, for he moans soundlessly, open-mouthed, against the side of Thor's neck, then slows yet more, and stills.

He drops onto Thor, very nearly punching the breath out of him, surprising Thor's arms into coming up around him in an embrace.

"That may be the most idiotic thing I've ever done," Loki sighs.

"Ah, but was it not enjoyable?" He strokes his hands down Loki's back, enjoying the sensation despite their joined heat and the seed against his skin within his clothes.

Loki huffs out a laugh. "It is lesser outlawry, what we have done."

"We are neither of us unmanned."

Loki drags his fingers through a lock of Thor's hair. The angle is awkward, but Thor appreciates the gesture. "Others would not see it so. Me, between your thighs, seed spilled willingly by both of us..."

Thor is not as young as he once was; it will be a good few minutes yet before he can rise again. Yet that reminder of Loki's pleasure in this makes him wish he could.

"I do not see others here to condemn us for it," he says, and shifts; one of his legs is falling asleep.

"No," Loki agrees slowly, and turns his head for a slow, shallow kiss before pushing himself up and off of Thor. He readjusts his trousers, grimacing.

Thor unbinds the braids in his hair, knowing that they will be impossibly mussed, and uses the leather ties to pull it all back. Loki watches him do it, and self-consciously smoothes his own hair down. 

Thor stands, sets his hand on the back of Loki's neck, but Loki shrugs it off, pulling Thor down for only a brief kiss and then pushing him gently away. "You should go; you look freshly tumbled."

Yet Thor can see already the faint hints that Loki is almost ready once more; feeling greatly daring, he cups Loki in his hand, feeling the weight of him, the dampness from sweat and seed. "And glad of it."

Loki laughs, thrusting lightly into Thor's hand, and then they are pressed together again, the room growing dim with the falling forge-fire left abandoned, the summer-night full of the sound of insects, audible even through the heavy stone walls and the sound of each other's breathing.

+++

He realizes as he is riding into the stables - sticky with dried sweat, Loki's scent rising from his clothes - that he looks the worse for the trip. He already discovered halfway to home that Loki had left a bruise low on his neck, and that only because his shoulders ached anyway.

Well, he can say it was simple roughhousing. They have done that before, been caught straining at each other's joints and laughing with the exhilaration of play-combat in all sorts of locations. In their third century they spent a month having to be dragged out from under the dinner tables so that they didn't give each other concussions on the table-legs. 

He bathes, finds dark-violet bruising on his hips from Loki's grip and from the manacles; yet more on the insides of his thighs, from Loki's weight; a patch on his ribs from clumsy elbows and the chain. Sore spots on his back from the bench, the stone floor, the walls.

He cleans his teeth and thinks how Loki mentioned the scratching of Thor's beard against his face and then winked. How Loki tasted, hot and eager, his skin salty and cooling with sweat.

He rests a hand briefly at the back of his own neck, then dresses and goes to send a message to the Dwarves and Elves.

Father sees him in his office, and when Thor reports their conclusions - not bothering to conceal Loki's role - his mouth thins.

"Your trust in your brother's advice is unwise," he says, his shoulders bowing. "You cannot know whether he intends you good or ill."

The way Loki pulled his head down to kiss, and then afterwards smirked and said, "They'll call you nithing, you know, if they find us."

To which Thor had flared with anger - it did not feel like cowardice; it felt like courage and terror and satisfaction at Loki choosing this, with him. It did not feel like being unmanned, but rather - knowing himself, knowing Loki, more deeply. It felt good, and not a crime at all. 

"If I do not trust him, then he will feel no need to be worthy of it, and never be trustworthy at all."

Father shakes his head slowly. "May your wounds in the doing heal quickly. 

"So. You think it is fire giants. Which combine?"

"That, we do not know. Ones who have an interest in metallurgy, but that is all of them, or nearly."

Father snorts. "All, excepting the ones with an interest in petroleum."

Thor nods. "We'll be opening the blocks shortly, to see what is in the other side, and then we will treat with the fire giants."

Father shifts his weight. "And for what will you ask?"

"For the metal back, and for them to leave Alfheim, and to pay the weregild for the deaths."

"And if the ore has already been worked?"

"Then we will have what it was worked into."

Father nods, slowly, in thought. "I see. When you return we will call the Muspel ambassador here, and ask of her answers. I would not like for Surtr to be overly surprised."

_And yet not give him time to muster his forces and threatening us into backing down,_ Thor thinks, but does not say.

"Sire," he says, and bows, fist over his heart. Father nods at him in dismissal, so he goes.

+++

The replies from his companions in the investigation arrive by the end of the day; the Elves propose a three-day wait, the Dwarves five. He sends out more missives, and finally it is settled, so he goes.

In the Bifrost gate-chamber, Heimdall stands beside him, watching the bridge generate, and says, "Your Royal Highness."

"What is it, Heimdall?"

"You know that it is said I have nine mothers."

"Yes, the nine daughters of a lord of an underwater kingdom, whose name was never known to the Vanir, nor to the Æsir."

Heimdall stands there a long moment, long enough that Thor turns to him, curious what holds his tongue, now that he has begun speaking at all.

"My mothers were not blood sisters, but rather thought of themselves as a sisterhood. Allies, against men who would mistreat them, and whom they did not love well."

Thor swallows, cold down to his bones.

"I will not speak against them because I love them all, and it is not my place to judge my parents. But I trusted in their love and faith for each other."

The bridge is nearly completely formed.

"Understand that I cannot speak of this thing, against their being hurt by those who do not know them, whom they did not raise with love as a son to all of them. But remember that they are on Vanaheim, and that is far from here, and the sea is very wide, their island far from land."

Thor cannot think that - he closes his eyes, breathes deeply. "Heimdall," he says in acknowledgement, because he cannot say at once _Thank you_ and _I do love him_ and _I understand_ and _Please do not tell our parents._

He can still feel the warmth of Loki's hands cupping his face.

The Bifrost activates, and he steps on.

+++

Opening the blocks was easy enough, heat pouring out enough to drown, and then the Dwarves set up makeshift fans as they go along, keeping the halls clear enough. Thor is still glad of his light armor, instead of the heavy he thought to bring.

They reach more branchings of tunnels, some closed, some not, but this time when they bring the drill forwards to break open the sealed tunnel, it drills and drills but there seems little progress. 

The Dwarves bring forward some of their sensors, and then shake their heads. "Solid as far as we measure," says the lead geologist, her beard wriggling with frustration. "It must have filled with -" her mouth snaps shut, and she turns to the Elf-judge who joined them.

"This tunnel was filled with magma," she says. "It was deliberately blocked off. At this depth - or lack thereof - in this soil…" she bows her head. "The magma beneath the ground was what burned your villages. They are not operating safely, and their carelessness has been the cause of the deaths among your people."

_May our grief be seen to its givers,_ whisper the Elves. Thor has little idea what they mean, but Loki would probably know. Might know. 

They explore for some hour or so more, but the tunnels lead ever deeper, and become ever hotter. Eventually, they retrace their steps, and the lead Dwarf says, "If we wish to make a full exploration of these chambers, we will need warriors, full time. If our Elven cousins would not mind providing some...?"

"We wish first to evacuate the remaining towns here, and those who wish to guard may join." The judge says. "The expertise of our Dwarven kin is welcome here."

Thor nods. "Asgard will send warriors as witness, and supplies if called for," he agrees, then adds, "It will be good to seek vengeance against the careless who have hurt so many."

Fandral tenses. 

"We will not seek vengeance," the judge sighs. "Only remembrance, and perhaps an apology, if we can get it."

"And the sanctity of our borders," snorts the geologist. "As well as whatever they've been looking for down here, whatever it might be."

Thor nods. "We believe it may be some necessary additive for adamant."

"Ah." The Dwarf nods to him. "That, we would like to reclaim. It being taken from below ground, by rights the domain of Dwarves."

"But extracted at the cost of our people's lives," counter two of the Elves quickly.

It....goes badly from there. Thor listens to them argue all the way back to the surface, and can think of nothing to stop them, though near the excavated block he says, "It cannot be distributed if it is not reclaimed, and first we must treat with the fire giants to have it returned," but that quiets them little.

He returns from Asgard uneasy and retells the events to Father, who shakes his head.

"Now they will seek to undercut each other in pressing the fire giants, and accomplish less than what they would have as united peoples," he sighs, as though Thor could not see that for himself, and then spends the next ten minutes suggesting things for Thor to say to try to remedy, or at least ameliorate, the situation when he next meets with either group.

He spends the next day attempting to erase his embarrassment on the training fields, tearing through most of his opponents and thinking of sparring with Loki, who would equalize their height and his own preference for daggers by breaking through Thor's defenses and sweeping him to the ground to wrestle.

Thor doesn't know why Loki does that. Thor outweighs him, and has greater strength, and they both end up covered in dirt, Thor laughing and Loki, in retrospect, bitter with defeat. Both of them smeared with dust, streaks of mud on their faces from it mixing with their sweat.

The thought of it now - of Loki's weight resting solid between his legs, hands pressing at his ribs, or with his legs clamped around Thor's hips, keeping him close enough to reach for joint locks - catches in his thoughts, smears heat all through him. 

He'll never look at their childhood roughhousing the same way again, now that he cannot but think of their bodies close and hot with desire.

The sparring leaves him exhausted, as was the point, yet he still has difficulty sleeping that night. His head swirling with other, better things he could have said, Father's disapproval. Loki's mocking laughter at his past failures long before this one.

He wakes sore in the morning, and does some exercises before being summoned to audience with the Elf and Dwarf diplomats. The word that the mountain may contain a necessary ingredient for adamant has reached them, so this, too, has grown more fervently acrimonious.

He escapes, after a halt is called, to the forge. It's past dinner, and when he arrives Loki and Völund are seated before a fire, playing dice. Loki is losing, if the pile of misshapen nails on Völund's side of the table is to be believed, but Loki does not seem wholly ill-tempered.

Thor knocks on the door-frame, watches Loki's expression shift from feigned indifference to a sort of stifled pleasure. His shirt-laces are undone, and the neck hangs open over his collar bones. 

"I only wish to see my brother," Thor says, and Loki's mouth flickers into a smile, then back into polite interest.

"Come to free me at last?" he jibes, and stands, brushing his hands along his hips in the old familiar gesture of checking his belt, his hidden coat-pockets, for the foci of magical tricks, his daggers, the stray scraps of paper he would use for jotting down notes and calculations.

"You know I have not," Thor says, because he's fairly certain that was a joke rather than mockery, and then catches Loki's elbow, drawing him close for a short embrace. "But I have missed you, brother."

Loki's back is to Völund, so Thor is only a little surprised to feel Loki's smiling open mouth press briefly to his neck.

"It's nice to be beloved of another, isn't it?" he murmurs, loudly enough that Völund stirs in his seat, hand reaching for his belt-dagger at the insinuation.

"Peace, brother," Thor says, and stifles the hand he wishes to run down Loki's back, instead releasing him.

"Horse-mother," Völund says, and Thor watches Loki's back tense even as his face remains impassive, "You won't get out of this game so easily. Come back and finish."

"Your victory is not sufficient?" Loki asks, and Thor half-wants to warn Völund that that is Loki at his angriest, that Loki does not and never has reacted moderately to slights against his manhood, but in truth that Völund uses it despite Loki's inability to answer is the mark of a coward, and if Loki must resort to lesser means than the island-walk to regain his temper, it is only just.

"A man finishes what he starts," Völund answers, and Loki smiles - Thor would not want to be in Völund's place right now; the last time Loki looked like that, the man _started_ with cuts to the tendons in his ankles, and ended, a viciously long time later, with breaking his nose. Loki never fought his holmgang to the death because, he said, he would rather the man learn from it.

That was the last duel Loki fought for being called nithing, nearly three centuries ago.

"I do try to finish things, even when they don't go in my favor." Loki shrugs easily and sits again at the table. "Thor, you might as well join us and watch."

He does, and quickly realizes that something is wrong. If Völund was winning steadily before, now he loses.

If Loki were not wearing those cuffs, Thor might suspect sorcery - they've won enough money back from ill-considered bets that way for Thor to know the signs. But that can't be it, and finally all the nails are on Loki's side of the table, and the game is over.

Völund, ill-humored with losing the game, stands and grits out, "Good night" before fastening Loki's cuffs to a hook on the hearth and heading to his own bedroom.

The moment the door is closed, Loki is standing beside Thor's chair, one hand on the table and the other on Thor's shoulder as he seizes a kiss.

Thor stretches up into it, drinks fully of Loki's taste and the texture of his mouth, and nudges Loki's knees with his own in an effort to get him to sit in Thor's lap.

Loki pulls away, smirking, and returns to his own chair. "Tell me," he says, "What did you find in the tunnels?"

"That we need more people to guard the paths and keep us from losing our way, and that the Elves and Dwarves cannot even be civil long enough to make a joint demand for the adamant-materials that the fire giants may be taking from them." Thor tips Loki's mug enough to see that it is filled with water, and drinks the dregs of it. Loki kicks his shin to express his dissatisfaction.

"So they realized it was adamant?" Loki traces a possibly-aimless pattern on the table, aligning the nails this way and that, the patterns rolling out of place with the field from his cuffs.

"I might have mentioned it," Thor admits.

"Of course you did." But Loki is smiling, albeit faintly, so Thor is not overly worried by his disdainful tone, especially when he strokes his fingers along Thor's forehead, brushing back a stray lock of hair.

This is a new liberty, one that Loki would not have taken even last week, and it feels - intimate beyond itself. 

"Father did not think much of it, either."

"He wouldn't," Loki agrees. "As though it wouldn't have come out anyway, and devolved from there. Ah well." He shrugs. "Compared to making a great trough in the ice of Jotunheim nearly a mile deep, and poaching to death some ten thousand frost giants, your ill-judgements are not so great."

Thor is, for once, quick enough to still his tongue before, _And do you call what you did 'ill-judgement'?_ before it can emerge. But Loki seems to hear it anyway, or see it in his face, because his smile widens into a vicious grin. 

"Play dice with me," Loki murmurs, "or tafl."

Neither of them is particularly suited to either. Thor doesn't follow the likelihood of others' moves well, and while Loki can, he grows bored quickly, and will lose games on purpose halfway through in order for it to be over.

Dice, at least, are random.

Ten minutes later, he remembers: dice are random only when they are not Loki's dice. Thor rolls one, then another, in his palm, then sets the first one down.

"This one's weighted," he says, as Loki looks at him mildly.

"An amazing conclusion." He picks it up, rolls it between his palm absently, pinches it between thumb and forefinger to peer at it closely. "And an extreme accusation against the master smith."

Thor rolls his shoulders, unsettled. "It's subtly done - only an extra, what, five times per hundred?"

Loki sniffs disdainfully and palms it into his trouser pockets. "Don't be crass; it's unbecoming of a crown prince." He sweeps his wrists through his stack of nails, picking them up, and shakes them off into a bucket of what is probably scrap iron, judging by their twisted shapes. "If you insist on calling me a liar and won't play dice with me, what then?" And his expression is mild and inquisitive and so entirely his own false innocence that Thor knows this was a feint, misdirection against -

Loki laughs when Thor pulls him close, sliding easily from his own chair to sit sideways in Thor's lap. He kisses Thor back, briefly, then stands and leads Thor to the little closet where his sleeping-pallet rests.

Thor drags him down into it, holds him tight against his chest and kisses him until Loki pushes himself up, undresses them both, gets Thor drunk on the scent and heat of their bodies together, greater even than the summer that wraps around them.

+++

He wakes sweaty, unsurprisingly; Loki has half-rolled off the pallet onto the stone floor, curled up on his side where Thor pushed him off when Loki fell asleep immediately after. It is not that he is very heavy, or that Thor minds his weight, but rather that Loki has always been made of elbows and sinew, as he is even now despite the muscle he's gained from forge-work.

Thor strokes the hair out of Loki's face, the locks that came unbound last night, and watches the slow swell and release of his belly as he breathes. 

He had thought, somehow, that in sleep they would still fit together as they did when they were small, but that is no longer so - or perhaps it is the summer heat, and in winter they would do better, wanting each other's warmth.

Loki slides his fingers along the floor and frowns minutely. Opens his eyes and says, "I don't seem to remember letting you have my bed."

"But the stones are cool," Thor points out, even as Loki wriggles gracelessly onto the pallet.

"And _hard_." Loki's eyebrow quirks, clearly a challenge, and Thor bites down on _Shortly so will I be_ because that's what Loki is thinking, anyway. 

"Come here, then," he says, rolling onto his side and moving back so that Loki will fit. They are pressed the length of each other's bodies, and Loki's hair frizzes wildly with the humidity, catching around Thor's fingers as he draws Loki's mouth to his.

Loki's ribs jut into the muscle of Thor's bicep, caught beneath him, and Loki's arm is wedged uncomfortably under Thor's head, but it's nice, being this close, only half-aroused and no urgency in either of them.

They kiss until they need to part for breath, and Thor swallows once, twice. Murmurs, "Völund?"

"This day of the week he goes into town on his own counsel and leaves me chained to the hearth like a dog." Loki's mouth twists. "Better a dog than a monster, I suppose, who are meant to be finished by fire or sword."

Thor kisses him again rather than contest that he is a monster, but it is not by his blood but rather his choices. The deaths he has caused, directly or no, and over which he has expressed no shame.

Loki smirks against Thor's lips, slides the thumb of his free hand down Thor's spine. Wiggles his toes against Thor's, tickling, and Thor slings a leg over Loki's in order to keep them close and out of -

Loki rolls his hips into Thor's and _that_ is trouble. Thor sinks into him, the planes of his back, the way his neck smells and the feel of the tendons against Thor's lips, the straw in the pallet rustling faintly as they move. Loki strokes the length of Thor's back, down further, cupping him softly and then letting go, sliding back up. 

Thor can hear his own breathing, heavy and speeding, and moves to tip them over, to push Loki onto his back to press himself down into Loki's body, when the door opens.

"Horse-mother," Völund begins, and then stops. Loki laughs, brittle, near on to the cries of ravens, and his fingers press briefly into Thor's back before he is pushing Thor away, rolling to his feet. Naked and aroused and unashamed as he gathers his hair back.

Thor cannot be so casual, but he meets Völund's gaze. Völund sneers at him.

"So the line of Odin ends in kinslayers and nithings," he murmurs, and that accusation Thor cannot but meet with challenge and violence -

But before he can finish his three steps towards Völund, Loki laughs, high and wicked.

"Cleverly done, master smith. He cannot challenge you, for you did not say it before witnesses - myself, of course, being legally barred from oath-swearing or testimony - and you will not, presumably, say it before others. As Thor could best you in the ring."

At this, Thor stops. At least his arousal has lessened, with shock and horror.

"Why should I not? I spoke the truth, and any who hear it would believe it." Völund's eyebrows rise. "Tell me - will the Allfather send away his heir again, and permanently this time, or blame the mad foundling?"

Thor cannot - he clenches his jaw but does not look away. "He would not send us away now."

Loki touches Thor's elbow, his expression drawn into sadness, his shoulders slumped. "He's right, you know."

"It was not what he will say it was," Thor grits out. Loki's neck feels perfect against his palm, as Loki presses his face into Thor's shoulder and then pulls away.

"But Odin and the court will trust him over you. Go, Thor. I have duties at the forge."

"I will -" Thor begins to say, but Loki shushes him with a glance, and pulls on his shirt before slipping out the door. Thor's shoulders hurt, his belly cold, from the shock and the sudden loss.

"Enjoy your honor, while it remains," Völund sneers, triumphant, and watches Thor dress.

Thor is just pulling on his belt, hooking Mjölnir to it and thinking the wholly unworthy thought of _If I were to silence him, here, Loki would not speak against me, and there would be none to say he had not made an attempt on my life, or mentioned plans to kill Father, or -_ but the thought makes him ill. He has no idea what they will do; Völund will tell Father regardless, and the punishment for permitting another man's advances, for allowing oneself to be made woman in the act, is exile. 

He would go to Earth, where he has friends, but Loki...

Loki is not loved in any realm, and he has passed through most of them, but the idea of being without him is...

He has to pass Völund to exit the room. Völund does not move to make way for him in the doorway, and Thor thinks: _So this is what you truly are, with a little power._

He goes to his horse, which is busy denuding an ever-widening patch of ground near a tree, and looks up only when he hears a cry from the forge.

He runs. Finds Völund on the floor, blood spreading slick on the stones, and Loki searching the weapon rack, then the corners of the forge.

"Oh, good," Loki says, as Völund moans, "I wasn't sure you'd be back. He's going to need a healing stone, but don't use more than two. They're in the box near the water-trough."

"What have you done, Loki?"

"Hamstrung him, and it was deserved, I assure you. Smith, where did you _put_ it?"

"Nowhere you'll find it," Völund spits, gasping. Thor crumbles a stone over his leg, watches the blood-flow slow, the inside of the wound begin to seal. A second one, and it looks half-healed, still red and open but scabbing slowly, the edges beginning to come together.

"Don't be like that," Loki says, not looking away from the racks of blades, "Or I'll undo all the work that Thor did to patch you up. The sword, Völund."

"So you will give it to the fire giants, and thus betray us?" he gasps. Thor surreptitiously crushes another stone over his wound.

"No, I want it as a morning gift for Thor," Loki sighs, and turns slowly, gazing at the walls before he shrugs. "Very well, we'll do this the hard way."

Thor, not sure if he is amused or offended or both, says, "I do not recall you being a virgin." Loki smirks, pulling him up and giving him a sword.

"Do me a favor?" he asks, smile glinting. He is standing too close, close enough that Thor can smell him, can smell them both when he inhales deeply.

"I won't kill Völund."

"Don't be insulting; I wouldn't ask it of you at this point. No, I need you to cut off my hand."

Thor isn't sure what noise he makes, but whatever it is, it makes Loki smirk. 

"Not _permanently,_ " he says. "Long enough to take the cuffs off."

That is only reason, of a sort. "You would not seek the key?"

Loki turns his wrists. "Alas, my gaolers soldered the keyhole shut when they put these on me."

Thor had not even noticed. "I do not -"

"If you will not kill Völund, then you have to find a way to silence him, if you don't want to find yourself exiled. If you choose exile, then I suppose you would rather go with Mjölnir, and your armor, and your godhood intact. No?"

"We are not gods, Loki."

"So cut my hands off, heal me, and let me take us out of Asgard. Exile in advance of the judgement, if you will."

Thor swallows. "You ask much of me that I am not easy in giving."

"It's my hands that are being removed." He pushes the manacles high up on his forearms, then sets his left wrist on the table. "That's the sharpest sword here, compensating a little for the weight. Do it in a single cut, if you can." His face twists, and Thor looks at him. Thinks about Völund, still bleeding on the floor, dragging himself out the door, and how he will tell Father what Thor and Loki have done. How Loki is looking at him, expectantly, as though waiting for Thor to disappoint him.

Thor cuts down. There is a crunch, of bone and sinew and flesh, and Loki screams, bending over. Thor picks up the sword. It didn't cut all the way through. Thor cuts again, and now the hand is off, blood everywhere, and Loki is whimpering, clutching the iron manacle, letting it drop to the table. Thor crushes a healing stone over Loki's wrist, Loki's blood smearing everywhere as the wound heals up, as the bone tries to grow together again.

Thor crushes another, and then another, until Loki hisses, "Save some for the other."

He stops. There are five left. Loki's face is ashen, blood dripping down from the table's surface, pooling beneath Loki's wrists. Loki's hands and the cuff are wet with it. 

"You can't - take it off - now that one hand is free?" he says. He lays his hand over Loki's wrist, but lets go at Loki's wince.

"No, sadly, unless I wanted to break my thumb and several of the bones in my palm to make it fit."

"Would that not be preferable?"

Loki tilts his head to look at Thor, his pupils wide in the darkness. "I would rather be free than imprisoned without my greatest skill."

Thor smiles, despite himself. "You still have your tongue." He slots a hand against Loki's jaw, half-grown stubble rough against his skin.

"So I do," Loki admits, pressing faintly into Thor's touch, and then turns, rests his other hand against the tabletop.

Thor sets his hand in Loki's, taking comfort from it, and cuts.

This time Loki's breath only catches, and the hand in Thor's goes uncannily limp, and the blood is now over Thor's hands as well - he smears the other cuff off and heals the hand back into place with three of the stones.

Loki alternately cradles each wrist in the other palm, face tight with strain, pain-sweat standing out on his skin. Thor takes his shoulders, slides his palms up to cradle Loki's neck. It leaves blood-smears on his clothes.

"You should sleep," Thor says.

"The sword first." Loki closes his eyes, puts his hands together. Inhale, exhale. Using magic to search, then.

"Found it," he says, low and satisfied, and, after collecting his cuffs, sets off towards the house, kicking Völund in the ribs as he goes. It is too swift for Thor to stop him.

Loki finds the sword in the house's cellar, tucked away behind some dried herbs and a few barrels of beer. It is wrapped in some old, worn wool, what was probably once a part of a blanket or a cloak, a mussed grey, but when Loki draws it out - wincing with the strain to his wrists, and his hands shaking - it looks very fine.

"If we'd had this to cut my hands, it would have gone more smoothly," he sighs, with a flicker of a smile, and then sets it back. "You take it." He goes back up into the house, to a corner of his chamber, and picks up a floorboard, revealing a few cloth bags.

"What are those?"

"Gold and silver trinkets I forged myself."

"You are above theft."

" _I_ am a theft. If your father is not above it, then I see no reason why I should not be." His jaw tightens. "The cuffs are lodestone enough to buy us a year's food and lodging, at least; but for other realms we need other things to trade." His eyebrows rise. "Unless you intended to stay on Asgard?"

That is what strikes the air from his lungs. 

"No," he says lowly, thinking of Mother, and how it will hurt her to know them both gone from Asgard. "No, I will go with you."

Loki pockets the bag. "Where do you want to go? I am of course no lover of Jotunheim, nor are you well-loved. Vanaheim will see no crime in our choice to bed each other, though I am hardly well-loved there, either -"

"I daresay you are not well-loved anywhere outside the palace."

Loki coughs, feigning awkwardness. "Nor there, any longer. I think you will be the last one. Despite my own best efforts."

_You cannot believe that,_ Thor almost says, but of course Loki does. Loki, in retrospect, seems to have always believed that people thought the worst of him.

But if Loki can be of aid - can be shown to help people, not just hurt them - then he might be forgiven a portion of his crimes. Might redeem himself, if only in part. He has not been so mad, these recent weeks. And even if his regret was not genuine - he has not expressed eagerness to do harm again.

"Alfheim," Thor says. "We should go to Alfheim. I wish to find which combine set the fires. With the sword, we might even broker a peace."

Loki smirks. "Ever the optimist," he says, but it is fond, and he reaches for Thor's hand to take them between the worlds.


	3. Chapter 3

When Thor goes before the high judge among the five remaining towns, she leans forward and says, "You brought the convicted kinslayer and attempted genocide twice over to our world, and to our towns. And yet you claim that he will work no ill deeds against us."

"My brother," he ignores Loki's snort, "has no issue with your people, and we ask only for passage into the mountains, to seek the gate to Muspelheim and the combine which has killed so many of you."

"Who is to say that you will not take the Dwarves' vengeance from them, or take the ore that is rightfully ours?"

"With all due respect," Loki murmurs, "Where would we take it? I am not convinced that it is a base ore for adamant, since Thor has seen none and there are a thousand substances that the fire giants would mine another world for. I would see proof, rather than take the unsubstantiated word of a man who knows nothing of metal or ore."

The judge sits back. "And you know metal, little Æsir?"

Loki smiles, bows his head slightly. "Enough to know better than to trust an unsubstantiated rumor, or my own judgements without the advice of the Dwarves."

The judge snorts. "Prettily said. Let me then call the Dwarves, and ask if they will see you into the depths of the caverns. Have you rations?"

Loki spreads his hands, smile sheepish. "Alas. Our own enthusiasm precluded such good planning."

Two of the less-senior judges lean to speak into her ear, and she nods, faintly, at each one's words. "We will lodge you in the investigation camps. It is crude, but closer to your goal.

"Your Highness, may I have your word that to your knowledge, neither you nor your brother is here to harm either ourselves or the Dwarves, nor that you have the intention of doing so, nor creating a situation in which we might come to harm?"

"To my knowledge? I swear it."

"I see my reputation precedes me," Loki murmurs, but his eyes are bright with bitterness. Loki rarely lies outright, a distinction that Thor sees the logic of, but not the merit. That Loki does it frequently, and often for fickle reasons, is what makes him untrustworthy. He does, usually, keep his oaths, though. He never swore fealty to Thor, and would argue that kindness between brothers is a social convention, rather than a law.

"Your conviction precedes you," the judge corrects. "Pending the Dwarves' agreement, you will pass into their realm. If they do not agree, we ask that you seek Muspelheim elsewhere."

Thor bows, accepting the judgement. "We understand. Thank you."

"May the world's fairness fall upon you," she responds, and stands to leave them.

+++

The Elven camp near the cave-entrance is quiet, somber. No children play, and the water is taken from the rain-cisterns high in the bare trees, not from the nearby stream.

In the narrow tent allotted to them, Loki drops his fetters into a corner and casts a spell of soundlessness before stripping Thor naked and tumbling him into the ground. 

Stripped of his magic, Loki burned, bright and wanting against Thor; but with his magic returned to him, lying with Loki is to be devoured. Thor wakes in the morning bruised from Loki's hipbones and hands and teeth, and when they dress the Dwarves are just arriving. It is close after dawn, but already they shade their eyes with dark goggles.

The situation, or as much of it as Thor and Loki committed to the Elves, was already explained in the missive; they are there as escorts into the caves, to as far as they have explored, and no further. Once down into the heat, he and Loki will be alone.

At the entrance to the caves, Loki trips over a rock, catching himself on the cave wall and wincing, rotating his ankle a couple of times, then holding his wrist.

Thor lays a hand on his shoulder, wanting the reassurance of Loki's steadiness. "Are you all right?"

"Only my pride is hurt," Loki says, half-laughing at himself, and they continue.

At the edge of the Dwarves' exploration they all stop, saying their farewells. Loki accepts a pack of rations, in addition to the one from the Elves - they will be well-provisioned - and then the Dwarves are gone, trooping back up the tunnel.

When they are no longer audible, Loki crouches down, sets his hand on the floor, closes his eyes. Thor watches the torchlight play across his shoulders, the hard bones of his face. Like this, he looks more severe than usual, and Thor is reminded of the hunting trip with the mad boar which stalked them. It had gored one of their companions, though he later made a good recovery, and had then used the smell of his blood to track them. It had come close to their camp, and Loki had pressed his hand to the ground, closed his eyes, felt the earth. Told Thor, "There," making the smallest gesture with his hand, and Thor had thrown Mjölnir far and heard it strike flesh.

"What are you looking for?"

Loki shivers faintly, then stands. "The route." It is more than summer-hot down here, and they are both sweating. Loki's clothes cling to him, and Thor can feel the sweat dripping down his own back, down his face into his beard. 

"To where?"

"The fire giants' camp here." Loki rolls his shoulders, readjusting his pack. "Surely you didn't think I would lead you back to the surface, when we are both so set on Muspelheim?"

"No," Thor agrees. He wishes his breeches weren't sticking to him so, but they had no idea how long they would have. Loki doesn't even have any armor. If one did not know who he was, one might think him a simple porter, or a servant, rather than the lost prince. The dishonored prince, the kinslayer, the traitor, the usurper-who-fell.

Loki finishes drawing a sketch of the cave system nearest them on the floor. "That said, I set markers on the walls on our way down, so we can find our way back, or alert the Dwarves, if need be."

"Not from Muspelheim?"

"No, though I'm flattered by your faith in me." 

The design on the floor glows faintly green, with a blurry red glimmer to mark their position. There are several tunnels before them, which branch repeatedly outwards back the way Thor and Loki came, radial.

"You cannot see the gate?"

Loki spreads his hands. "Not when this map is tied to the lay of the soil here. A gate is not of the worlds where it leads. But you could probably guess."

Thor looks again. There are some distinctly over-straight lines among the caves, close to them. Nature is rarely so linear. "That arrow-shape comes to a point not far from here. From there, we can follow the straight lines around the mountain. They are of a higher density here - perhaps that indicates more work is being done, or has been done, which would indicate a higher chance of the gate being there. If the gate is at the center of operations."

"Gates are hard to move," Loki says, wiping the map away and extinguishing its glow. "Their center of operations will be where the gate is, once it is in place."

The sudden lowering of the light - he had not realized how bright the map really was - puts Thor at a disadvantage, even despite the torch. He is night-blind, can only see the outlines of Loki's shoulders, the listless snarling curls of hair that have escaped from the tie flickering in whisper-shadows against the stone.

He takes a step forward, brushes a hand down Loki's shoulder to his elbow, then lower. Feeling the faint ridge of scarring at his still-inflamed wrist, and then slides his fingers between Loki's.

Loki's fingers tighten between his. "Völund will have reached the town by now, and sent a message to Odin."

Thor swallows. "If we are already gone from Asgard, I do not think he will condemn us in our absence."

"But he will disinherit you." Loki is suddenly close, one arm curving over Thor's shoulder and fingers stroking at the back of his neck. He doesn't seem put off by the sweat Thor can feel there. "Though if I were him, I'd claim it was for freeing me, not for." He licks his lips. "Alleged ergi, compounded by the cowardice of running rather than facing challenge."

That is what it looks like. Thor tries not to let it stick in his thoughts. How it will make them seem guilty, when it was - it was Völund, and his bullying. Thor does not know how Loki stood it, though after the hamstringing, he has a good idea.

"Tell me," Loki breathes against Thor's lips, "Does Odin still call me his son in your presence?"

Thor cannot remember, not with Loki so close, with the unwavering heat of him pressing against Thor's chest. "I don't know," he confesses, and Loki is smiling when he presses his mouth to Thor's.

+++

It was, perhaps, unwise of them to dally in that part of the cave system, even if it was only long enough to whet their appetites for each other. Yet, walking in the dark, wet with sweat and still on-edge from arousal, they do not meet anyone. There are a few blocked-off tunnels, and after the third one it occurs to Thor to wonder if the blocks and the burned towns are related. When he poses this question to Loki, the response is a shrug.

"I have no map of where the earth has been _put back_ ," Loki says, but Thor is certain somehow. Uneasy with the suspicion.

Some hour, or perhaps two, later, they stop for a short meal, even though they are far more thirsty than hungry. Thor has stopped trying to mop his brow, and Loki - Loki is clearly enduring it. 

If Loki is Jotun by birth, that explains his comfort in mild cold, even in his Æsir form. Or while under the illusion of being Æsir; Thor is not sure which it is, and knows Loki would never forgive him for asking. But if it then makes him correspondingly uncomfortable at the higher end of temperatures that the Æsir-born can bear...

"You will be all right, even with the heat?" They learned very young that although Loki could cool another, he could not do it to himself; it would only cause him to heat up further. They hadn't managed to figure it out until Loki fell unconscious from it, and Thor, panicking, had run to their nursemaids, terrified that Loki would burst into flames, or that he would die of a fever that had come on from trying to help Thor.

Loki snorts. "No worse than you. I'm even more lightly dressed. Since you were wondering if the Jotun foundling in its pale skin would melt."

"Even I know you cannot melt," Thor says carefully, and takes Loki's hand in the darkness, squeezing once. He means to hold on, but their hands are too sweaty for it to be comfortable, and slip apart.

Loki huffs out a breath, and says, "These tunnels are boring. I wonder where the giants are hiding."

Counter to what Thor would have expected, there is no sudden footstep behind or before them to herald a giant's approach; there is no rumbling of the ground making ready to swallow them. The torch flickers merrily, and Loki laughs, pushing gently at Thor's chest to indicate he was teasing, and sets off again.

+++

Eventually, they come upon a fork in the caves: this way utter darkness, that way a lighter darkness. Thor extinguishes the torch, wanting the advantage of knowing that their opponents cannot see their light, and they head towards it.

Perhaps halfway to the light, they come upon a small chamber carved out of the rock, one with crates and some machinery – spare parts, Thor judges, and rations for the workers. The boxes are stamped with the combine's logo. 

There are seven greater fire giant combines, and eight lesser, with another ten or so that fade in and away as the fortunes of their economy change; Thor was made to memorize the sigils of the high fifteen combines.

He did not mind the memorizaion, entirely; they are all cleverly designed, and most of them are puns in the fire giants' language.

This one is three squares, nested inside one another: _ksoen gonkoek _, it's called, puns for "honey" and "loan" respectively. _Ksoeng_ \- honey, in the language of the fire giants - is a financial-industrial combine, but started in banking; they own a significant amount of Asgardian debt. Ten, fifteen thousand pounds of lodestone, perhaps. The other combines own less, between all of them only fifty thousand pounds or so. He doesn't keep track of the exact numbers because they rarely meant anything to him.__

__"Ksoeng," he murmurs, for Loki's benefit - Loki is familiar with the fire giant combines and their workings, but didn't have the ear for the language, and had difficulty remembering which combine bore which logo._ _

__"Ah." Loki nods, peering into opened containers. Thor reads the labels - mostly rations, petroleum for whatever machines they might be using. Digging machines, to either widen the existing cave tunnels or excavate new ones. Air monitors, to make sure it's still safe to breathe. He knows nothing about mining and has no idea what they would need, but some of it is here, at least._ _

__"This feels different," Loki murmurs softly, from the other side of the chamber, and Thor moves toward him, then sees the label on the box._ _

__The first part of the compound word stenciled there means _raw sugar_ ; the next part is _iron_ \- as in a weapon, not as in lodestone - and the last means _amber_ or _sap_. Resin, then for some kind of metal or weapon._ _

__"It's a weapon-related resin," he murmurs, and Loki nods._ _

__"Likely to be adamant, then?"_ _

__He leans closer, close enough to whisper into Loki's ear and feel the humidity rising from his skin, "If you do not know, how would I?"_ _

__He can't feel Loki's smile at that, but it is reassuring to feel his shoulders unknot against Thor's chest, if only briefly._ _

__Thor continues his circuit of the room, finishing checking the boxes for anything exciting, but this room seems to be for storage of items they may have to move shortly, whether closer to the machinery they are using to excavate, or back to the gate for transport to Muspelheim._ _

__Loki takes up a crowbar, tucks a small knife - for cutting twine or other packing materials, as it retracts into a sheath - into his boot. Thor has Mjölnir still, but he sees a few eating knives in a box of rations, and passes those to Loki. They're not meant to be used as throwing knives, but better to have a mediocre weapon than none at all._ _

__Loki weighs them in his hand, sighs faintly in his old, put-upon manner, and secrets them in various places about his person. Even without his armor, they do not show, though in his less formal armor he can carry up to twenty blades without _quite_ looking armed. There is of course the usual belt-dagger for eating, but every man carries one of those, so wearing it openly hardly counts._ _

__Because of his brother, Thor rarely trusts men who look unarmed._ _

__They return to the chamber's entrance, where Loki brushes a hand across Thor's face – it leaves smears of sweat across Loki's palm – and whispers into his ear, _For unremarkability._ _ _

__Thor turns his head, presses a kiss to Loki's mouth, tasting sweat-salt and dust, before they return to the corridor._ _

__As they approach, the hum of electricity begins to stir under Thor's skin – not only the sound of machinery at work, but the flux of magic that it entails. Thor is barely sensitive to magic, but electricity he is kin to, with his link to lightning and to Mjölnir's own powers. He glances at Loki, whose eyes glint bright-white, and who is tracing lightning-flicker sigils into his own skin that leave reddened blister-marks behind. Storing the magic up._ _

__The metal pieces of Loki's armor were meant to be used as repositories for magic, temporary stores of power. Before how many fights did Thor call down lightning so that Loki could make himself fully ready for battle? He cannot remember, but watching this makeshift charging, watching Loki burn himself full-willing without flinching at the pain, is at once arresting and arousing._ _

__He makes himself look away, and breathes out, once. They have no healing stones with them; Loki may very well scar._ _

__+++_ _

__The closer they come to the light, the louder the noise becomes – a sharp, terrible machine-whine, the roar of crushing rock._ _

__The chamber is large – perhaps as large as the lesser of the two Halls in the palace, though Thor is not quite certain – and at one end is a great machine, the size of a house, that burrows its way into the rock, throwing up dust. The light comes from the many lanterns strung up along its frame, the back of which connects to several tubes that extend into another tunnel._ _

__That explains the thrum of electricity – such a device could only be powered by great electric motors, perhaps fed by petroleum generators. Thor has only the faintest concept of what it would take to run these machines; Asgard has little need to mine its own earth, being rich in resources already, and with little need to travel long distances or transport goods in such quantities as the fire giants do, that led them to develop machines such as these. Even the Dwarves, who mine much, rarely use such devices._ _

__Avoiding the device, Thor and Loki make their way to the other tunnel that leads into the chamber with the machine. It extends for a great distance, only sporadically lit, but in spots it widens, not to reach another chamber but as though they wished to have a space to put things aside where the great drill –for that must be what it is – would not destroy them when it was removed from the tunnel._ _

__Thor has no idea how they are separating the resin from the stone, but though he wishes to lean into Loki and ask, the noise is too great. Too, there is dust everywhere, getting into his eyes; he is careful to breathe through his nose, to keep it from getting into his mouth. The giants, whose world is coated in sand, and where grit-heavy winds constantly blow, are well-adapted to such an environment, but the Æsir are not so, and it makes Thor nervous._ _

__They follow the tunnel. After a time, when the noise is less somewhat – though the rumbling of the rock speeding in one of the tubes overhead, as well as the whine of the power in the cables there is still plenty loud. He turns to Loki and shouts into his brother's ear, "How are they sorting out the resin from the rock, do you think?"_ _

__Loki shakes his head. "Density, perhaps, or conductivity, I suppose. Find stones whose profile matches the resin rather than simply the surrounding rock, and separate it." He twists his mouth. "If the resin has a different melting point than the rock, it might be worth crushing it all into pebbles – not to processing-point, but a little lower – and allowing the resin to drain before further purifying it. " He shrugs. "I couldn't say for certain. I'd draw it out by sympathetic magic, perhaps using an electric current to power a set spell, but that assumes the resin has high cohesion, and also that they have a sorcerer."_ _

__Sorcery is known among the peoples of Asgard and Jotunheim, though there are those who claim that that is saying the same thing. That once the Jotnar were Æsir, but for kinslaying they were cast out to Jotunheim, where the land's native magic changed them. That their heritage remains in their magic and in their language's similarity to Asgardian._ _

__Loki speaks Jotnarsk, for all that neither he nor Thor saw the point in learning the tongue of their enemies. Whether he has deliberately forgotten that he does - the shame of being good at what would have been his native tongue, had he not been taken in by their parents - Thor cannot say. But they would write each other notes in the languages they shared, speak sentences that used the grammar of one language but the words of two others, doodle one language in another's alphabet on their assignments from their tutors. Their parents could usually decode such things, but few others; they left it off when they fell in with Sif and then the Warriors Three._ _

__There are sorcerers among the fire giants, or so it is suspected, but the word for sorcerer in Muspel is the same as that for engineer, so it is hard to tell._ _

__"Would they have one for an operation like this?"_ _

__Loki raises his eyebrows, very nearly a shrug but not nearly so strong, and shouts directly into Thor's ear, "If I were pulling the resin from the stone by sorcery, I would set the filtering spell at the beginning of this conveyor, having entirely pulverized the rock as it was excavated, to make the filtration easier. I see no separate conveyor for the separated segments, but I'm not familiar with this machine, and can't judge what it might be doing. It's probably not purpose-designed, but it might be nonspecific for filtering specific metals or other substances from stone."_ _

__We could go ask the engineers at the university in the capital, Thor almost says, and then remembers that home is gone, that he will never be able to return to his chambers, nor to his parents. That he chose this path, of exile for Loki. With Loki._ _

__They follow the pipes in the ceiling, long and long, encountering no one. At what they judge to be "late enough, or at least we are hungry," they sit and eat; Loki removes the enchantment obscuring them, and they drink a few sips of their water and chew on some dried goat meat._ _

__There is no sense of time in the caves, or at least nothing better than their senses of time passing. Loki is on time to nothing and Thor utterly lacks a time sense other than the general feel of the sun's place in the sky. With no sun, they are both stranded against the days._ _

They stretch some, against muscle-stiffness from the repetition of walking, and Loki has Thor turn the still-healing joints of his wrists. It feels strangely intimate, even with what they have already done together, to press his wrists into strange contortions and then tighten the lock by slow increments until Loki tells him _There, hold,_ and then resting, keeping the tension, feeling it shift out of Loki's muscles until he murmurs, _A little more,_ and Thor obeys, holding there until finally Loki sighs, _Other side now._


	4. Chapter 4

They walk yet more, until they are both tired, and secret themselves in one of the alcoves. Loki replaces the unremarkability-illusion on them, and they sleep for what Thor thinks must be a few hours.

Thor is awoken by the roar of an engine, and he opens his eyes in time to see several fire giants riding in a motorized cart pass them, heading in the direction of the drill. Loki, beside him, sits up, crossing his legs.

"Shift change?" Thor suggests.

"We didn't see barracks there," Loki agrees.

What feels like fifteen minutes later, the cart returns. They've been waiting for it, invisible, and as it passes they grab hold of a part of the frame, climbing on the back. Two of the giants look back at the noise, but can't see them, so turn around. 

"That was odd," says one of them to the others. A couple of them shrug.

"Like I was saying, though, I don't think the Section Chief knows that we're here," says another, in the tone of one who is resuming a story. "Why else wouldn't we be hearing messages from her?"

"Because this operation is hush-hush and if she made any official messages it would have to go up to upper management. And once upper management hears, it gets political. You don't want Gizun hearing about us being here, do you?"

Gizun, Ksoeng's main competitor, is of smaller size but better-connected politically, as it was the combine that Leader Surtr's mother belonged to. It has interests in mining, steel, and petroleum – this excavation would be well to their interest, especially if Ksoeng doesn't have official approval for this operation.

On the other set of hand-holds, Loki is frowning, his arms twisted into the frame in order to keep the stress off his wrists, and probably trying to work through what the workers are saying. Thor doesn't want to risk the giants hearing them, so he keeps silent. He can explain things to Loki later.

However, this will give him an opportunity to catch the underlying dynamics of the situation. Inasmuch as All-Tongue allows any listener to understand the speaker, and vice versa, it loses some of the overtones and connotations of the language - in All-Tongue, it is impossible to know two simultaneous and exclusive meanings of a word, like when Darcy would pronounce something _Cool_ in her own language. All-Tongue functions on the meaning in use, and applies meaning-in-use as the translation. That the word he heard in Asgardian meant, more literally, "good" or "pleasing", made him confused when she then said, "Speaking of cool things" and started talking about snow. Puns are untranslatable unless the same confluence of words exists in the target language. It strips the language of connotation, figurative speech, and in many cases irony - and if the concept does not exist in the society of the target language, it is worse.

_"Listen to this," Loki said, shoving his book over in Thor's direction and beginning to read in Jotnarsk, which Thor heard as Asgardian, "'In the third year of the Throne's reign, she," he giggled, "She got a child upon her consort, and then was given one in turn; they bore for each other," and here Loki said a word that came across only as a sequence of sibilants, thick on Loki's tongue._

_"What did you say?"_

_Loki grinned. "I broke the All-Tongue. It's the word for two children born at the same time to the same parents, but not from the same mother."_

_"Twins?"_

_"Twins are born from the same womb, idiot," Loki said, kicking his shin. "So now that you know, look what happens: parent-twins. See? You heard it that time."_

_"So I did," Thor said, and leaned close and said, "We should be that. Born so close together." He rested his head on top of Loki's and felt Loki's hair smooth against his cheek, wanted to ruffle it and kiss his forehead, and Loki squirmed but did not push him away._

"Doesn't matter," says another one of the workers flatly. "We've got our orders and we obey 'em 'til it's not in the combine's interests anymore." 

How the combine's interests are defined, and personal tensions that may define them, is a long literary tradition in the fire giants' canon. Loki's poetic offerings sometimes bear more than a passing homage to such themes – Thor's, when he tries, less so. His tend to come across only as flat recitations of deeds, which is well enough, but he lacks the gift for kennings that would make them even passable.

The cart eventually drives through several processing chambers - it's still not clear how they're extracting the resin - and comes to a stop at the entrance to a series of smaller chambers that look like barracks. The chamber next to it contains rations and water, it looks like, and behind them - ah, there's the gate. The machinery to run it takes up most of two chambers, and a significant fraction of the second is filled by sacs of petroleum, for powering it, or perhaps as an emergency backup: keeping a gate such as that open long enough to bring across significant mass, takes a great deal of energy. He has little idea how long, or for how much mass, the petroleum they have stocked up would last. Loki might have a better idea, but this isn't the time to ask.

He and Loki drop off the back of the truck and sneak over to an unused space, where they sit down, and Loki massages his arms.

"Well," he whispers, or more accurately shouts into Thor's ear a little less loudly than the equipment around them roars, "they're certain of the security of the gate's other end, if they've only got enough petroleum to send themselves and their haul back in an emergency."

That answers that, then. Secure grounding in Muspelheim, but unknown political viability at the higher levels of management. Surtr, of course, has no particular objections to encroaching on other worlds than the one under his control, but as Leader of Muspelheim, it would be his decision. If he were to find out about Ksoeng working without his knowledge or approval, it would be ruinous.

Unless there is some other, greater plan afoot, that does have his approval, and which these workers do not know about.

Thor touches the hilt of the sword strapped to his back, suddenly uneasy. Adamant is one of the few metals that the fire giants do want, and the ingredients are rare on Muspelheim. The version that the fire giants forge is rare and valuable enough that they pay in lodestone for the ingredients.

Loki sets a hand on Mjölnir's head, and then Thor can hear him, or at least feels the sense of him saying, _Probably a shift change. Who knows when the next shipment will come in._

Thor thinks, very deliberately - and he can feel the psychic equivalent of a fond shrug from Mjölnir, relaying the projected words - _If Surtr does not know of this operation, and if they are unsure of it...if Father has not publicly announced that I am disowned yet, then we might be able to ask for an audience with him._

Loki bares his teeth. _I know a woman in the Ministry for Interworld Commerce who would be interested,_ he says.

_I'll need your help with the gate's controls._

Loki's hand slides from Mjölnir's head, up her haft, to brush over Thor's hip before he stands. It leaves Thor's mouth dry, feeling the rasp of Loki's skin, the way the magnetic field he gives off as a side effect of using his sorcery to obscure them to sight interacts with Mjölnir's innate magic.

He is destabilizing, unsettling the humming equilibrium of Thor's bond with Mjölnir, and Mjölnir is set alight, vibrating softly with the aftercurrents of Loki's power.

She hasn't always liked Loki so. Hasn't always wanted to be in the same room as him; would ripple with power to ruin his magic, for some time after she and Thor were bonded.

He thinks she might be enhancing his strength with her own and Thor's, now. It's hard to tell over the thrum in his blood, and if he asks, Loki is likely to say something about whether Thor is beginning to doubt his own wife's fidelity.

Loki is standing at the gate's controls, glancing over them dismissively and badly hiding the frustrated tension around his eyes. 

"Is the large blue-green button 'start'?" he says snidely when Thor arrives, and looking at it, Thor laughs, sliding his fingers along the grit-rough panel below it. 

"Traumatic shut-down, actually," he says, and at Loki's disgruntled frown he leans forward and presses a kiss to his mouth. 

It eases Loki's tension a little, at least, and works well as an apology against Thor's laughter.

He drags his fingers along the panel, circling the buttons but not touching them, as he reads off the labels as best he can interpret them. "Start. Width, horizontal axis; height, vertical axis, energy density, temperature, fluctuation, intensity of use, terminating coordinates, percentage of required energy being provided at other end..." 

"The central controller is at the other end, of course," Loki murmurs. "But this side can, possibly, initiate."

Loki taps his fingers against the corner of the gate's machine. "It would be noticeable for the machine to start on its own," he murmurs, mostly to himself, then glances at Thor. "At the same time, I'm not sure I can point my way accurately in Muspelheim with the gate's currents so strong, and without knowing where the other end of this gate is within Muspelheim..." He shakes his head. "If we want to go through this gate, it might be better to go almost fully disguised except for that bitch at your hip-"

He doesn't realize he's slammed Loki up against the wall until the pain of impact reaches his shoulder. His thumb is pressed into one of the veins at the side of Loki's neck, the breadth of his fingers just below the corner of his jaw, and it's not meant to be an actual stranglehold but to be disconcerting, yet Loki is looking _down_ at him, superior smirk in place, eyes glittering-smug.

"Mind your tongue," he grits out, releasing his hold on Loki, letting him down, and Loki's grin only widens as he slides closer, hands dangled over Thor's shoulders.

"Still fond of the only wife you'll ever have, I see," Loki murmurs into his ear, and Thor has no idea what turned Loki all at once from so accommodating to so contrary, but rather than becoming angry, as Loki would likely rather he do, he slides his arms around his brother and holds him, strokes his back. 

"I am sorry you have not had time to recover fully from the interworld transit," he says. "And I do wish you had your armor, and all your preferred weapons, and a thousand other clever items that have helped ease our way out of scrapes before." He bends to rest his head on Loki's shoulder. "But Mjölnir does not warrant your scorn."

Loki's back is still wet with sweat and tight with displeasure. "No," he says, and then, "Let me go."

Thor releases him, but cannot be sorry to have taken Loki's phrasing badly: Mjölnir is a part of his soul, her head as much a part of him as his courage. She could only be stripped from him in the ways that would break his mind or his spirit. She is less alienable to him than his hands, and would be still a part of him even were he to become physically unable to wield her. 

"There must be some way to create a situation that would create a need for them to contact Muspelheim," he says, and is taken aback when Loki turns to him, smile brittle, and says, "Which of the Nine Realms does Surtr wish to dominate above all the others?"

Thor's breath catches, and then Loki is striding out into the barracks-chamber and poking the nearest fire giant awake, his tongue curling into the familiar strange unreality of All-Tongue.

"Good morning, or afternoon, if it is," he says, and has his eating knife pressed slickly to the weak spot in the giant's armpit, where the bone ridges are thinner and the way to the heart and lungs is easier. "Be very sweet and tell me your name."

The giant's throat clicks. "Gohng."

"Excellent." Two other giants are trying to sneak up on him; he turns, takes two steps forward, and turns the one on the right, stabbing his blade up and under the ribs near the hip, into the kidneys. Pulling it out and switching the blade to the left hand. 

"Ah-ah," he says sweetly to the other, who has hesitated faintly, but whose weight is tilted forward as though readying for attack. "I'll gut him." He looks down at his hostage's combine-markings. "Excuse me, her."

She exhales, a quick pant of breath. "We will roast you in your own juices and feast on your flesh, Æsir."

His grin widens. Thor is – uneasy, with the way he looks now, as though mad and joyful with it. It is like New York, his confidence, his joy in blood rather than violence as a test of skill.

"Such a mouth. I'd sew it shut, but I haven't a needle and thread. Women's work, you know," he says. "Let's try this nicely, shall we? I'm called Loki Laufeyson, and if I must introduce myself, others might ken me as the lost prince of Asgard and the genocide of Jotunheim. I wish to speak with Surtr, and will harm none who do not try to harm me, until I see him."

_And destroyer of New York,_ Thor wants to add, his heart aching at _Laufeyson,_ but Midgard means nothing to most of the realms, its people less. They would have no idea what New York was. He's not sure Loki even knew the city's name.

Loki is too weak now to transport himself to Midgard, and he has no allies, but he could give Thor to the fire giants, could abandon him there and secure an ally in invading Midgard. 

But he would not dare. He did not want Midgard; he sought it only because it was under Father's protection, and he wished to defy Father, to destroy Thor. Because the Chitauri wanted the Tesseract, which is safely in Asgard, where it can be defended.

"You are known through all the realms as a liar and traitor," says the one on the bed, and Thor notices the stripes of managerial status on his arms.

"Then when I inevitably betray your nonexistent trust, you may of course attempt to kill me. Let's review, shall we? I have escaped from my imprisonment in Asgard - you'll notice I am not wearing magic suppressors, thank you, and have not yet slain you all in your beds or turned you into draug or something equally melodramatic - and came here to go to Muspelheim. Why not send me on and make good your escape before the Asgardians follow my trail to Alfheim and barge in on what looks to me like a little clandestine mining?"

"Why here, if you want to go to Muspelheim?" his hostage points out. "Better to die with our honor than put the Leader in danger."

"You _are_ clever," Loki marvels. "I'm sure you'll go far in management. Because Asgard's idiot of a crown prince has been looking into the fires that you've been causing aboveground, and had the poor judgement to tell me about it."

Their faces all blank, the fire giant look of rising dismay.

"Don't look like that; do you really think he's bright enough to figure it out?"

Thor can't help that one - it was sometimes a pleasure in their youth to make sport with others in which Thor pretended to be less clever than he can be, and to make fools of others without their knowledge. It is a tactic that has served them in good stead in times of need, especially those times when they were stranded outside the capital without any money left after their carousing, and needed still to buy passage home, or to reclaim their mounts from pawn.

He cannot believe that Loki intended for it to result in Thor being known throughout the realms as gullible, and a fool, and Loki the cleverer of them, but that has been the effect, and Thor is never particularly upset by it: he has never believed the stories told of the greats of other realms, in deference to it, and it has served him in good stead at times to be underestimated.

Someday, when he is King, that reputation will - he freezes, mentally. He will never be king, having gone with Loki.

"So. If you would, please, open the gate. I would prefer not to be stabbed as I step foot into Muspelheim."

His hostage spits. "Your house is made of oathbreakers and liars, Odinsson. You could give me your word on your own sorcery that you meant us no harm and I would not believe you."

Thor regrets, then, that he can see Loki's face; for at traitors and liars he smiles, and it vanishes from his face as though struck at _Odinsson_.

"Alas," he says, "the house of Odin is full of liars. I don't particularly care if you trust me, so long as your companions do what I want. Open the gate, and I will be gone from your mine."

The manager says slowly, "Very well," and rises from his bed, leading them all towards the gate's machinery. Thor follows at a slight distance, close enough to intervene should he need, but far enough not to worry about someone bumping into him. But Loki does not need his aid, and Thor did not really think he did.

The gate starting up feels like being washed over with a magnetic field; it sets Mjölnir to ringing, and Thor shivers, skin prickling with the sensation. He can only imagine what Loki feels, but Loki doesn't move beyond turning the knife in his hand.

"Go on," Loki prompts to the manager. "You first, naturally."

First the manager, and then Loki murmurs, "Who next, I wonder?" and while he pauses, Thor goes. He moves out of the way just in time for Loki to step through, the hostage pressed close in front of him, and they both vanish from sight.

The room is stark, combine-utilitarian. Silt-stone floor, dull silica-steel walls. No windows, which may or may not argue for it being subterranean; it could just be interior, or could have been designed for technological or research work, in which case there would have been no windows, as they would have compromised the functionality of the room. Not to mention wasting a view that could have been better spent on upper management.

The third fire giant does not come through; the gate merely stays open.

There is a touch to Thor's hand; he whirls upon it, but sees only his brother.

He has no idea where his brother's hostage is, but the two fire giants who were standing guard are calling for smoke, to allow them to see what's present, calling out the hostage's name, asking for her to respond. The manager is out of sight, presumably out of the room looking for the shift manager.

The door is not well-guarded; there was clearly no time to muster warriors, though one of the guards was clever enough to think to block it with his body. His weapon extends into the section he cannot block himself, and what space remains is too small to fit through. Thor disarms him easily enough, uses a quick hip check to send him to the floor and then he and Loki are out, into the building.

They slam through a couple of halls, running, and when Thor sees a managerial office, labeled with the title of a section head, they dart into it, closing the door behind them.

Loki drops into the visitor chair; Thor sits on the edge of the desk. The air is unexpectedly cool; it must be winter in Muspelheim, and after the hours spent in the darkness and heat of the tunnels, he feels drained.

"You know that I will tell him that I wish to betray Asgard," Loki says finally. "Do you think I will not actually go through with it?"

Thor palms some sweat from his own neck, then realizes he has nowhere to wipe it off, so he lets his hands drop into his lap. "I know you will," he says. "That was what started all of this."

Loki is out of the chair, slotted between Thor's thighs, his hands fisted in Thor's hair, before Thor has taken his next breath.

" _I started nothing,_ " he snarls. "You are always favored - have always been, from the moment of your birth - and so you cannot see that our treatment has been unequal since we were children."

Thor did not feel better-favored as a child, has little recollection of Loki being treated differently, beyond the whispers that started when Loki began to show sorcery. 

"You are not less than I," he says, "and if I had known you felt so, I would have done my best to -" only Loki tries to throw him back against the table, and Thor holds on. "Loki."

"You were part of it," Loki says lowly, "and you loved me without respect. I am sick of disdain, and disrespect; I have been choking on it since we were children. I would rather be hated honestly than disdained." His hands loosen in Thor's hair, but do not let go, and Thor can feel the burn of Loki's gaze upon his throat.

"You would not have been so little respected if you had not sought to antagonize all of Court at every turn," he says. 

Loki bares his teeth. "You are lucky I love you so well," he says, and attempts to move away, but Thor catches his elbows, keeps him close.

"I do not care why you think you are owed the deaths of innocents," he says. "I love you, and that will not change, but if you seek in truth to destroy Asgard or any realm I will see you bound again, even if it means I am made outlaw."

Loki pants hotly, his breath spilling over Thor's mouth, but neither of them moves the distance forward to kiss.

"You are," he hisses, "a thousand kinds of hypocrite, and a coward besides, to free me knowing what it meant and then use re-imprisonment as a threat."

"Yes," Thor says, "But I am finding dishonor liberating." He smiles, stroking his thumb at the rough scarring at the inside of Loki's wrist, and hopes his smile does not resemble Loki's. 

Loki tears from his grasp, sets his hands on Thor's thighs, digging his fingers in, but says nothing. His eyes glitter, strange with bitter joy. Thor nudges him away, standing up from the desk.

"We should go to the manager," Thor says.

+++

Word has already reached the Division Chief; she is waiting for Loki in her office, with a large glass of water. Loki takes it, stirring it with one finger, and takes a long swallow. Thor is rather envious of him.

"You wish to see the Leader," she says by way of opening.

"Of course." Loki's eyes flick up over the rim of the glass at her. "Much as I do appreciate your hospitality, I don't think you can give me what I want."

Thor wants to kick Loki. She has Ksoeng combine markings, high-ranking ones, but those are melded with older ones in the characteristic swirls of Yanggieh combine's logo, a border of sweeping branches around an empty center. _Yan'gieh madoe_ , it's called. She moved combines, and only the most ruthless and well-connected do that. Who knows what position she held at Yanggieh, or to whom she is related?

"You have no idea what I can and cannot do," she says kindly. Thor steps back, noting the nameplate on her door. _Aring'goe_ , with the mark of the Yanggieh combine following it, and then the blotted dark circle of government service, with a stylized symbol - a deer, maybe? - to represent the specific branch. Thor doesn't recognize it - the military is a sword; Surtr's personal guards are wholly blank.

Loki's approach may be unwise. 

"What do you want? You might as well tell me," she is saying as Thor reenters the room.

"Insider trading?" Loki points out, making a moue. "Bad form."

"You have already done us the bad turn of finding our facility in Alfheim," she says calmly. "I have some reason to see that you do not reach the Leader, as the facility is immensely valuable to us. As I'm sure you've surmised."

Loki waves a hand. "I am a fair sorcerer and a fine liar. Do you genuinely believe I cannot mislead him in how I came to be in Ksoeng's offices? Say that I misjudged the trip to the capital, in the excitement of my escape. Most sorcerers would." He takes another long swallow of the water, his throat shifting. "We both realize that if you are negotiating with me, I have an incentive not to tell him, but to pretend as though I will, to extricate maximum concessions. So. I will not tell him except out of vindictiveness, and if you have the authority to help me on my way to an audience with him, I'd appreciate it." He smiles, more genuinely. It's the one he uses when he's courting, and Thor cannot help but feel a faint pang of jealousy, though there is no reason he should feel so.

"My name," she says sweetly, "is Aring'goe," and Thor hears her name, but by Loki's face he hears something else, the translation perhaps.

"Iron-blade," he murmurs, and that name Thor knows from reading the internal finance reports that Asgard was entitled to, as a result of Muspel owning so much Asgardian debt. In Asgard, she is called _Jarnsaxa,_ translating the individual elements of her name, and up until three years ago she was the Director of the Muspel Central Bank.

+++

Loki clearly does not put together the translation of her name with the Jarnsaxa who all but restructured the Muspel financial system. It was carried out after a number of irregularities on the parts of several of the combines - especially the smaller and subsidiary combines - came to light. Thor remembers hearing several evaluations of the situation from Father's financial advisers at the time, but Asgard's economy is not structured like Muspelheim's, and Thor has a poorer grasp of economics than most. Something, he thinks, with having loaned money at rates that were not appropriate, or owning too much of each other. Several of the large combines hold controlling interest in others, or in the case of Ciema, the large combines fight over its ownership because of its historical and government-mandated monopoly on the process for extracting sulfur - a necessary dietary component for fire giants - from the natural gas deposits in the north. 

He does remember that the changes she implemented were controversial, and not always to the benefit of greater competition. Always of greater oversight, though with the government's current involvement in industry, it's hard to see how they could become more tightly entwined.

She is beautiful, by any standard - tall, with the characteristic mottled skin of the fire giants, and the eyes with shaded rings around them, to keep out the sun. The fire giants do wear clothes, after a fashion, mostly thin garments designed to glitter and keep the sun from falling too heavily upon their skin. Her own outfit is more modest than most, drawing attention to the span of her neck, leaving her arms bare. It is a particularly passive outfit, among the fire giants - economic power and bearing children are correlated, for them, due to inheritance law structure - but she wears it well, and her managerial marks are on full display, as are the bold intimidating swaths of ink from her government service.

Loki will underestimate her, Thor thinks, no little vindictively, and yet with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Loki is going to be played, and Thor will not be able to help him if he wants to keep his presence a secret. 

"A strong name, for a formidable manager," Loki says, and Thor can't tell if that smug I-know-more-than-you-think-I-do tone to his voice is genuine, a bluff, or Loki being overly self-confident.

"And you strip yourself of patronymics like a snake does its skin," Jarnsaxa murmurs.

Loki freezes. Thor puts a hand on his back in warning, and feels Loki's spine tense its whole length.

"I know when I am bested," Loki says, and the mad look is back, though he's hiding it with contrition. "I would like to see Leader Surtr because I want to wreak vengeance upon the house that raised me to think Jotnar were monsters, and let me think myself Æsir until it was no longer convenient. I would ruin their futures as they ruined mine, between stealing me from the house that birthed me and lying to me about whether I was truly one of them. I want a real, direct vengeance, instead of the pitiful attempts at spite and - let us be honest - searching for affection I would never be granted, that I tried before."

Thor drops his hand. Pitiful attempts at spite, that is what Loki calls New York City's wreckage. Thor cannot tell what is playacting and what is truth, but he suspects this is closer to Loki's actual feelings, and as much as he loves Loki, that is vile.

He swallows. 

Jarnsaxa nods, slowly. "The house of Odin is well beyond my own purview," she says, very calmly. "Give me three days, and if the Leader will see you, you will find out. If not, you will be sent where it seems most fitting. Until then, you will stay in these offices, and as a gesture of good faith..." She holds out a hand. "Your word is worth nothing; I want something of yours in pawn."

Loki's smile goes rueful. "Alas, I have only the things I was able to bring with me when I made good my escape, and they are of little enough value."

"A man as clever as you would know where what he needed was hidden."

Loki makes a noise low in his throat and pulls out the iron cuffs and the bag of metal. "I only have money," he says, "and somehow I doubt that's what you want."

"Indeed." She spills out the worked trinkets over her desk, fingers them. "These are your own work?"

"My humble offerings," he says quietly, and she smiles, slowly.

"I will have this one," she says, taking a small brooch worked into the shape of a raven. "You won't miss it, I'm sure."

Loki shrugs. "You are welcome to it."

She turns it over in her hand, and smiles. "I will see if your deal terms can be met. If it is successful, I would like one thing."

"What?" 

Her mouth curls. "Options on anything you make or which comes into your ownership, for the next...let's say year. It's a poetic length of time, and either your problems will be over by then, or not, and I have little enough interest in your troubles."

"At what percentage?"

"Ten percent."

"Five."

"Ten, up to ten thousand pounds of lodestone owed you overall, decreasing to three above that."

"Before or after it is garnished from me by Asgardian law?"

Her eyebrows rise. "We both have no expectation of you paying anything towards that debt. Without any impact from Asgardian efforts to take it. I have faith in your ability to pay what you owe, in your own way."

Loki tilts his head, considering. "I think that's fair. _If_ I meet with Surtr."

She smiles, all the way open, and opens a drawer on her desk. 

The fire giant custom of writing their debts on their skin in iron ink is - well to Loki's taste, if the way he extends his arm and lets her spell the magic-taste of the debt into Loki's skin. It's small, only a few drops of ink to hold the magical reminder, and when she runs her fingers over it to check, Thor's mouth is full of the taste of her name and the ringing sound of Loki's unknown debt-value. It will fade after a year, leaving nothing behind. Such marks function only as a reminder, not as enforcement.

At the end, she stands, and Loki follows, the sleeves of his shirt falling back down over his arm, and she gestures him out of the room. "It was good doing business with you," she says, as Loki stands in the doorway, just out of the way enough from it that Loki can pass by.

"I will see you in three days," Loki murmurs, and turns his back.

+++

Thor is not sure what prompts him to allow himself to be locked in to Loki's room, but once the door is shut and Loki has checked the room as best he can for monitoring spells and devices, the illusion drops.

Thor unbuckles the sword from his back, slinging the rations away. "Why would you make such an agreement with her?" he asks, unsettled, thirsty.

"Because I want to know what she thinks I know, or what she thinks I am owed," Loki says.

"Jarnsaxa knows that you have no idea who she is," Thor says hotly, and Loki's eyebrows rise. 

" _Jarnsaxa,_ " he murmurs, and then "You're right. I should have offered her eight percent; she probably would have been content with it."

"Loki," Thor tries, and Loki pauses in his thoughts to look up at Thor, then strip off his own shirt. 

"Yes? I'm going to take a bath, if it can wait."

"She has options on anything that comes to belong to you in the next _year,_ " Thor says. "That's idiotic. What does she think she will receive?"

"I don't know," Loki says, and his smile is all teeth as he shivers, delighted, "But I want to find out."

That, at least, breaks Thor's mood; he curls a hand over Loki's shoulder, feeling the stickiness of his skin from dried sweat, and says, "Do not let yourself go too far ahead of things."

"Says the hothead between the two of us," Loki agrees, and all at once he is stripping, drawing Thor into the small bathing chamber, where the tub is too short and narrow for the both of them. They wash each other in that too-small space, knees and elbows and even shoulders jarring, and if Thor masks his suspicion and unease with the seeming of simple pleasure, then it is no more than he has come to do, since Loki opened Asgard's treasure chamber to a group of Jotnar.

+++

On the second day, while Loki is still sleeping in the morning, Thor leaves the room and retraces the route to Aring'goe's office. He sees no one, as it is in the middle of a night shift, though in truth he expected to see _someone_ , and when he knocks on her door, she calls, "Come in," in Muspel.

He opens the door and says in All-Tongue, "Heimdall tells me that you spoke with my brother."

Her eyes narrow. "You are in foreign territory without permission."

"I seek my brother, and know that you have made a deal with him."

She sets her fingertips against her desk, the murky glass dark against the mottled red-brown of her skin. "I did," she says. "I assume you know the terms."

"Why did you not give him up to Asgardian justice?"

She smiles. "Do you know," she says softly, "I have worked with Asgard before. I bought your debt, you know. I have no faith in him, but rather in his ability to make something out of what he is given." She shrugs. "I owe Asgard nothing, as your law cannot touch me here. I have the ability to give him what he wants, and wanted to see what he would give for it." Her eyes flick over Thor's body. "You would like to see him, then. If you are here."

If they were to meet, Loki might give them away, which would be of little use. Which would give her further information.

"Yes," he says, because if he had truly not seen Loki, he would want to. 

"And take him back to Asgard?"

Thor swallows. "His punishment is deserved. I cannot say I enjoy seeing him brought low, but his crimes are -"

She shakes her head, smiling. "You are a fool if you thought you would be able to see him with our permission. Not when you intend to remove him to Asgard, and when we might gain something from the potential of his extradition."

Thor heaves out a breath in what he hopes sounds like frustration rather than relief, but suspects he has failed when she smiles.

"If you swear not to call upon Heimdall," she begins, and then one of the lower-ranked employees knocks quickly on the door and strides in.

"Division Chief," he says, "there are reports of Asgardian Prince -" he stops. Bows. "I see you have already met. Excuse me."

"No, stay," she murmurs, gesturing. "The prince wished to meet with his brother in neutral territory, with the understanding that he has no legal right within Muspelheim to remove Loki from the planet, nor indeed even Ksoeng's compound, without creating an international incident."

The subordinate's eyes flicker between Aring'goe and Thor. "Division Chief."

"I'm sure he can wait long enough here to fetch his brother, if he'll come."

"Yes," Thor agrees, "tell him it's me."

The subordinate, possibly a group leader - those tattoos are less uniform between combines - bows acquiescence, and exits.

Thor crosses his arms. "I have not promised not to call out to Heimdall when Loki arrives."

"The promise was implicit." She smiles, her teeth bared. "Prince Thor, let me be clear. I have your brother here, and will release him as and when I and my allies see fit. Until then, he dances to my tune, as much as I am able to make him and as long as it seems that doing so is in his interest. That you have come following after him would be no surprise to anyone in the Four Realms; you are known to love him, and he is by his own admission an escaped criminal of the highest degree. I expected you." Her smile widens further. "I expected you to storm in and ask for him back, because that is what I would have done for any of my younger siblings, were they to be in trouble from which I felt a need to protect them." 

"He should be returned to Asgardian justice," Thor says, and she nods.

"Yes. And what are you empowered to give us in return?"

The sword, perhaps. His silence about the mine in Alfheim, he could never give, not after so many deaths, and knowing that there would be more, inevitably, directly as a result of his own actions. 

Not himself - he is of no value, and they would find that out soon enough. Nor Mjölnir; she cannot truly be parted from him, not while he still lives -

That, now, might be to Surtr's taste. Upon finding out how little value Thor holds in Asgard now, it might be worth it to pretend such an exchange, and then have Thor's life as reparation for the lie, to free Mjölnir of her bond. It is what a dishonest man might do, and Thor suspects he may be consorting with more of them soon than he once did.

"I thought not." She sits back in her chair. "You did not come here to negotiate, and perhaps without your father's knowledge. Consider the visit a gift, then, and when it is over and you are willing to deal we can speak again."

Thor nods. He cannot go back, cannot call upon Heimdall or the bridge. Nor should he presume upon Loki's powers, for fear or giving away their extent, when Loki once guarded that knowledge so cautiously.

"Prince Thor," she says, thoughtfully, and then smiles. "You do not stand much on ceremony, seeing how you allow me the liberty of addressing you first."

"My honor is not made from enforcing the rules of status." Unless Father is less angry than Thor suspects, she will soon know the extent, or lack thereof, of his honor. Regardless of what Loki says. Without making public their crimes, there might be someone who would let him - he would never bring Loki - back. Which could not be permitted. He nods to her. "Besides, I am familiar with the services you provided to Muspel."

She makes a faint click in the back of her throat, a fire giant's ironic laugh. "And you do not resent me for what my term in office did to your own economy?"

"Muspel does not feel itself guardian to the well-being of other realms as Asgard does. That you acted in the interest of those under your protection," Thor begins, but cuts himself off at the snick of the opening door.

"Loki," he says, turning, but Loki's face is cold, haughty.

"Thinking to work your own deal with Ksoeng?"

"Of a sort," Thor says. "You are wanted in Asgard, after your escape -" the lines around Loki's eyes tighten. "And of course Heimdall permitted me to see where you had gone." A breath, to let Loki follow him. "Division Chief Aring'goe has explained to me that I am not permitted to remove you to Asgard without at the very least Ksoeng's permission, which she withholds. So I will wait here to find out whether you may be brought home, or not."

Loki's smile curls. "You presume much upon Ksoeng's hospitality."

"But not more than we are willing to give," Aring'goe answers. but she is looking at Thor with a strange heat to her gaze. "You surely have much to talk about. Would you prefer to be supervised?" This to Loki, who clasps his hands together.

"Thor's word is good, when given. I have no fear of him spiriting me away to Asgard without Ksoeng's knowledge."

Thor cannot but feel struck, at that. At Loki's gesture of trust - even if it is playacting at being on opposite sides of Asgard's law, when in truth they are not. At Loki naming his word good, even in Thor's dishonor.

"Very well," Aring'goe says. "I hope for my own sake that you are telling the truth." She gives them both a smile that Thor, rueful, shares: Loki's word is famously untrustworthy, through all the realms. Letter-accurate, but false in spirit, when the result would not be to Loki's taste.

"Thank you," Thor says, and even knowing as he says it that it is unwise, "I am in your debt."

Aring'goe laughs. "Untrue, but gracious." She stands, opens the door. "Dhaga will be able to show you to Loki's rooms; he will come again when it is time for lunch."

"Thank you." If she were one of his own warriors, Thor would clap her on the shoulder; as it is, he places a hand over his heart.

"The sun at your back," she says, the traditional fire giant farewell.

+++

Back in their room, with the door closed and a second bed already there, Thor says, "Is there anything watching us, electric or sorcerous?"

Loki stills in the center of the room, then says, "Current."

Thor raises the lightning within himself, Mjölnir singing beneath his hand, and then lets it go.

Loki exhales. "There's wiring in the walls, attached here," he indicates the light fixture in the ceiling, "and there and there." Another light, and an outlet, its six connectors fanned out in spokes. "No magic." 

Thor sits on the bed that was laid out for him, and says, "She's going to take you to Surtr."

Loki raises his eyebrows. "How impetuous of her. In her place I would let me sit and rot until I found a use for me."

Thor shakes his head, thinking of the tone of her voice, the way her smile lit her up darkly. "She wants to be entertained, and perhaps to profit by it. Not to win politically."

"That's just what she told you," Loki points out. He's giving Thor a considering glance, and not an entirely pleased one at that. "If she was, as you say, head of the central bank...once politics, born to politics and never leaving it."

"Yes," Thor admits, and slides down to the floor to stretch.

+++

In the evening, when their meal is brought, as Loki is taking the tray he says, "Have you a hand-held tattoo needle to spare?"

The employee makes a strange noise. "For what?"

Loki turns his hand palm-up, exposing the inside of his wrists. "I'm a sorcerer. If you have any inks with iron-dust in them – not lodestone, simple iron; I make current enough – I'd prefer that. If not, I'll take anything with soot in."

"I will check."

He returns an hour later with two different machines, both with coils of wire and lodestone, and vials of ink. He lays them out on the table, in little sterilized packets, and Loki's fingers drift over the vials, his mouth quirking.

"Soot and silver?" he says.

"Soot, iron, and trace amounts of gold. Gold doesn't rust."

Loki exhales. "Thank you."

Once the fire giant is gone, Thor says, "You have never worked with gold ink."

"No. But the theory is sound. I wonder which sorcerer is going to scrimp this year on my behalf." He rips open one of the devices and examines it. "There isn't time to do everything – all my tattoos were drained out while I was imprisoned. How do you want me to specialize?"

"For defence."

Loki's eyes flick up as he wipes down his arm with disinfectant. His wrist is exposed, painfully bare without his braces, the veins standing out in his forearms. "As you see fit." 

"You may use Mjölnir's strength - and mine - for the offensive work, if you must."

Loki finishes loading the first vial of ink into the needle. "I'll likely hold you to that."

+++

On the third day, they are awoken by breakfast, borne in by a different one of Aring'goe's subordinates. Thor and Loki pressed the cots together and slept naked, after Thor washed the blood and ink from their clothes the night before and left them to hang dry on any corners or hooks available in the room.

Being in even the same bed together is impossibly arousing; even careful of his ink, Loki burns sticky-hot beside him, shadow-skinned in the darkness. At least the employee knocks before entering, and Loki is alert enough to illusion clothes onto himself as he fetches the tray with their food.

"I will return in two hours," the employee says brusquely. Thor appreciates the simplicity of his manner, rather than the formality that an Asgardian would use. The fire giants have little use for titles, though they are prone to nepotism within combines.

Once he has left, and the door is safely closed, Thor watches the illusion flicker away, revealing Loki's paleness, the breadth of his shoulders and the sharp-boned span of his body. 

"Have you often attired yourself only in sorcery, and gone out?" Thor asks. He thinks of Loki lounging at the evening meal clad in nothing but illusions, and is simultaneously horrified and aroused.

"No." Loki sits down cross-legged in the center of the bed, setting the tray between the two of them; it looks like slices of cactus, grilled lizard meat, and some sort of thin bread. "Riding without clothes on chafes, and the dogs would smell it."

Thor snorts, thinking of the hounds' sniffing at the groins of friend and stranger alike, and eats. The flavors are strange, but not entirely unlike home. Asgard. His birth-land. Whatever it is to him now.

When the employee returns - the same one, Thor thinks, though the man wears no name tag, and his tattoos are general ones for his position in the company - they are shown again to Aring'goe's office.

She is wearing a moderately sober outfit, one that fits tightly to the shape of her body without emphasizing her bosom, sleeveless to show off her tattoos of rank. The smear of solid darkness on her left shoulder is eye-catching against the burnished copper-brick of her skin, a blatant reminder of her government service.

"Shall we go?" she asks, rising from her desk. "Alas, it will take a little time to reach the Leader's compound, but I'm sure neither of you will mind."

"Does Thor really need to be here?" Loki glances at him balefully, while Thor does not have to try to look unaware: not thirty minutes ago Loki, dressing himself in the light formal garments which the fire giants had given him - his forge-singed clothes apparently not being good enough for meetings with Surtr - had looked across the room at Thor and said, "I do love you."

Thor had been too far from him, then; had taken the three steps to bridge the distance between them and pressed himself to Loki, and said, "I am glad, brother."

"If only because this way Asgard will not be able to say we dealt falsely with them," Aring'goe says sweetly, and then they are in a hangar, where one of the great treaded vehicles that the fire giants favor over beasts of burden is waiting for them.

+++

It takes two hours to arrive at Surtr's compound. Loki is in a bad humor for much of it, though Thor recognizes it only from his long familiarity with Loki's moods. Loki is pleasant enough, he supposes - tells stories about Thor's accomplishments, and almost manages to conceal the raw envy Thor now recognizes in his tone.

Once, Thor sets his hand on Loki's shoulder, fingers just brushing the edge of his neck. Loki relaxes, then shrugs Thor's hand off. It is not with dismissal, but rather an air of, _You have comforted me, and that is sufficient; my thanks._

"You are remarkably loyal to him, Prince Thor," Aring'goe observes, and Loki's shoulders go looser yet.

"We were raised as brothers," Loki responds, spilling further in his seat, his posture becoming more expansive yet than Aring'goe, who has spread her arms across the back of an entire row of seats, and whose skirt is draped nearly as far. "Why should he not be familiar with me?"

"Just so," she agrees, tapping her fingers against her thigh. Thor is struck, suddenly and urgently, by recognition of the shape of her thighs beneath the flow of her skirt, the space she has opened between them.

He looks away, uneasy. Loki's threats against Thor's human friends – Jane and Natasha, especially – were not moderate. And they were only friends, though perhaps Jane harbored some affection for him. That Thor finds Aring'goe desirable, Loki will not, would not, like at all. Might seek to hurt her, if only to reassure himself.

His attention is drawn to a bird sitting on top of a rock. Its feathers are a light brown, easy to mistake for the plant it sits on, which is thick-skinned and craggy, stunted. Aring'goe spends much of the remaining time reading some report or another, her free hand playing with the sides of her skirt. She occasionally slides her hand along fixed lengths of the cloth, working through some sort of calculation on a mental slide rule.

Loki leans into a corner of the bench and sleeps, or at least pretends to. His hands rest loose in his lap, the light reflecting differently off the smooth burn scars on his arms, nearly obscured by the raw newness of the ink in his skin. 

Thor has rarely seen Loki's ink. Court clothing covers most skin, and Loki did not begin inking himself fully until he was an adult, though he experimented with sorcerer's tattoos during adolescence. That, Thor knew of. At first he had reservations - sorcery being useless and vindictive, the art of the craven, and unfit for his brother – but then in their adventures he learned to appreciate its usefulness. That Loki used his gifts for petty things, tricks and illusions, was unbefitting of a prince of Asgard, but the small spells he worked into his skin showed themselves to be useful.

Thor has seen Loki fully-inked on occasion; once, when they went to a sauna in Sif's home fief, and Fandral had grinned and made some remark about Loki being a walking book. 

"A book that has saved your life, perhaps," Loki said, and slid into the water naked. 

Thor had been curious, and had drawn close, asking to see them. Loki had given his arm easily – "Don't eat it; that's where I put all the water-purification spells and tests for poison" – and Thor had looked for a few moments, reading the key-words inked into Loki's skin, before letting go.

But he has seen Loki's ink only a few times, and to see it now is strange. He read each of the spells from Loki's skin last night, but he finds himself drawn to them again, wanting to watch the mysteries of them – shield-spells and distractions, against sun-blindness, against heat and cold, for healing and for pain-dispersal - as they trace larger designs in his skin.

+++

They arrive at Surtr's compound when the sun is still high, though as Muspelheim has long days and short nights at this time of the year, Thor is not well-sure of the hour.

They are searched, their weapons carefully noted, and then led into an antechamber, where they wait, just the two of them. Aring'goe went aside before the search, speaking with one guard or another.

After a wait of perhaps an hour, a servant to the compound, in dark unrelenting tattoos, appears and escorts them to a smaller chamber, where they stand again, at least for ten minutes until three guards enter, and then Surtr.

Loki sets his hand over his heart and bows. Thor does not, is not obligated to, as the crown prince of a world equal to Muspelheim. Unless he has been officially disinherited, in which case - in which case they are lost, anyway.

"Thor Odinsson, of Asgard, and Loki Laufeyson," Surtr says, low and pleased. "I did not expect to see you in my halls as petitioners."

"Nor did I," Loki says, "but I'm sure Thor would protest your wording - he is no petitioner. He hopes that you will give me over to his custody, that he may return me to Asgard, and the punishment I escaped."

"That is so?"

Thor exhales. "I am told that Loki may not be removed from Muspelheim without your permission."

Surtr laughs. "That is true enough. Come now, though, let us be truthful. Asgard is in upheaval, with its prince gone - exiled, they say, for permitting his brother to escape, or perhaps aiding him; reports are not clear. Tyr has been declared Odin's heir, breaking the blood-inheritance of the Asgardian royal house. You arrived here from the gate in the Ksoeng mine - as though you think I would not know of it, when the technology to make such gates must be registered with the government - and you wished to hold it above me. As though Asgard would accept it as the price of your repentance. Am I right?"

Thor slides his hand down his thigh, the side of his hand brushing along Mjölnir's handle. "Not all of it."

"No?"

"We have something that might interest you, that is all," Loki says, shrugging. "It was intended to serve as repayment for any favors granted, but if it functions as a bribe..." 

Surtr leans back. "And what is this object?"

Thor takes the sword off his back, holds it in his hands. "A sword which was last in the possession of an Elven smith, near that mine Ksoeng is excavating on Alfheim." He remembers, barely, to mispronounce _Ksoeng_ as one unused to Muspel would, leaving the s unaltered.

Surtr remains leaning back. "You are in no position to withhold it, here."

"No," Thor says, "But it would disappoint Jarnsaxa if you took it away by force, rather than treat with us."

Surtr blinks. "What has she to do with anything?"

"We have a deal with her, that she may have ten percent of all that comes into our ownership for the next year."

A slow breath. "I see." He leans forward. "What did you want in exchange for that sword?"

"Passage to Midgard."

"And you cannot take yourselves?"

Loki spreads his hands. "As you see, we are constrained to traveling between world gates. We came to Alfheim by way of the gate the refugees are using, and through Alfheim to here through the one in your mine. To Midgard..." He shrugs. "We are dependent on your generosity, but would be most grateful if our destinations were not known to the greater Realms. Seeing as I am likely now to be slain on sight."

Surtr moves forward, as though to take the sword; Thor does not move to mount the dais to hand it to him.

"Are we agreed that my brother and I will be given passage to Midgard, at a time and to a destination that is to both your and our satisfaction?"

"So be it agreed," Surtr says. 

Thor unwraps the sword, mounts the dais, holds it out peacefully in his palms. He can feel the current rising in his skin, Loki's readiness against an attack calling to him and to Mjölnir, but Surtr takes the sword and Thor returns to the floor without incident. 

Surtr holds the sword for a moment, feeling its weight and the strength of its metal, and then says, "Long ago, this was forged for the fire giant Jeon-thi, who after brokering sixteen trading house mergers on behalf of Leader Dereo and establishing he foundation of our current government, married the protégée of the Chief Judge of Alfheim. She served as a diplomat between Emsoa and Alfheim, and resolved a number of trade disputes between the two worlds." His mouth purses. "It is meant for a fire giant's hand." His hand lights in flames, but the sword remains unharmed - though it would, being adamant.

"This is a weapon of great importance to our people," he says quietly, "And that it was withheld from us for so long is a shame upon Alfheim's people. We are grateful."

That was not the story they were told. Uneasy, he casts a glance at Loki, who is - equally confused, judging by the set of his eyes, though not the rest of his expression. It is possible that there are two such swords, but that they would both be involved in such a thing, and that Surtr would go to such lengths to acquire a sword that might well be granted back to Muspelheim if requested openly, is unlikely. 

"It was our pleasure to render such a service," Thor says.

Surtr nods, slowly. "Go with Aring'goe; she will make sure you are appropriately provisioned, and negotiate with Juyeo to arrange your passage to Midgard."

"Thank you," Thor says, inclining his head; Loki's bow is as low as he ever grants willingly, though still shallow enough to well be insolence, and then Surtr rises from his seat, is gone through a side door.

They are escorted from the room to the hangar where they came in, and Aring'goe is waiting for them, her smile wide and knowing.

"Shall we go, then?" she says, touching Thor's shoulder and Loki's elbow at once.

Neither of them shrugs her off.

In the tank, she leans forward - she has no bosom to speak of, presumably still childless, but the arrangement of her clothes gives the impression of it, and Thor finds his eyes drawn there anyway - and says, "So you have returned Jeon-thi's sword to Muspelheim."

"Yes," Thor says.

"For that price, you would have been given sanctuary in Muspelheim for the rest of your lives."

Thor does not like the thought of that. Being always hot, and surrounded by the sere redness and sand of Muspelheim's desert world. "We do not seek sanctuary here, though we thank you for the offer."

She turns the look on Loki. "He speaks for you?"

Loki's shoulders have eased, and the expression on his face bears none of the condescension that he wore when he spoke to her on the way there. "In this he does. I may someday take you up on that offer, though not yet."

"You do not worry that you will be rendered to Midgardian laws?"

Loki's smile is wicked, rueful. "It would be honorable to allow it."

"You care so much for your honor?"

That is a challenging insult, at the least, and before his sentence Loki would have been at Aring'goe's throat, woman or no. But instead of becoming violent, or returning the insult, his eyes widen in mock-innocence. "Honor has so many meanings. Which one did you wish me to observe?"

Thor cannot but marvel, that his brother, who was so recently in a jealous snit, and perhaps rightly so, seems to have grown fond of Aring'goe, but it is pleasing. She is a compelling woman, intelligent and competent in her field.

The tattoos on her shoulders shift in the light as she laughs.

"You have honor," he says. "You have made it your own, and will give it up for no one."

Loki goes still, and Aring'goe watches them, still smiling. 

"That is flattery indeed," Loki murmurs, and Thor is sure, is certain, that were Aring'goe not present they would fall together right here.

"It cannot be flattery if it is true," Aring'goe interjects, teeth showing with amusement. ""Will you join me for dinner when we return?"

"Yes," Thor says. "It would be our pleasure."

+++

After the meal - nothing special, particularly, merely a better grade of the same thing served to other employees - and once they have returned to the room, Loki says to Thor, "They may give us a choice in destinations on Midgard."

"I suppose." Thor is still warm with alcohol - fire giant drink is stronger, in general, than that in Asgard, commensurate to their body weight and the brewing methods they use - and happy with Aring'goe's and Loki's accord.

"Where would you go?"

The Man of Iron's bright gleaming tower, and the warm spice of the meal they had shared after the battle, with all of his allies present, companionably silent in their collective exhaustion. "New York," Thor says, then flinches.

Loki does not look at him as though he is a complete fool, but it is probably close.

"Your allies would be unlikely to view my return with pleasure," he says diplomatically. "I am not against public repentance, but I doubt it would be well-received." His mouth curls, wicked and knowing, and Thor is abruptly disgusted. With Loki and with himself.

"You are not above using their grief to soothe your own hurts, you mean," he says, and this is why they are brothers, for all that Loki will not use the word: they are terribly known to each other, know each other's embarrassments and childhood fears, know all the soft places of each other's pain and pride. 

Loki's eyes narrow. "I am not afraid of dying."

"You _want_ them to execute you. You want no mercy and no quarter."

"I don't want to die." Loki's mouth is a hard line, his eyes feverish. "My shadow was bound to the Chitauri - they'll find it when I'm gone, will have me back, and they will be _enraged_ at their loss." He's shivering, now, the ink on his arms starting to glitter. "When I die I want to be unmade, so they will never have me again."

Thor pulls up short. Loki is terrified, sweating, trembling.

"I would not accept them to kill you," he says, "and they would have no dealings with the Chitauri."

"And they'll respect your wishes, you the exile, and when you call me brother and we sleep together anyway -" His hands are loose at his sides, too easy, ready for a fight. "You think they'll listen to you when they want their own vengeance?" He shivers, though it cannot be from cold; Loki doesn't respond to cold. "You already know how to unmake a sorcerer after his death; on your honor and your love for me swear you will do it when I die."

Thor catches Loki's neck, draws himself close. He wants to say _You are fearful of nothing,_ but those creatures were not nothing, and he does not know what the laws of Midgard dictate. What they will want to do with Loki when he and Thor come to Midgard. "You already know that I have bound myself to you. Do not doubt my faith."

Loki exhales, his shoulders shifting into a less focused ease. "I'll try," he says.

+++

Juyeo House is located far from Ksoeng's compound, Thor quickly discovers, as they are loaded into one of Ksoeng's heavy cross-continent trains, made for times of officially-sanctioned holiday travel or inter-combine negotiations.

The little cabin which the three of them are assigned has space for four seats, and a steel rack above for baggage; Aring'goe has two bags, which she leaves there and seems to forget.

The trip is almost six hours. Loki spends much of it sketching keys for more spells on some paper, while Aring'goe sleeps.

+++

The sun is beginning to set when they arrive; they seem to be expected, for they are briskly greeted by three upper-level managers at the compound gate, escorted to rooms, and provided meals. Loki rumples his bed and sleeps in Thor's.

Near dawn, Thor wakes briefly. He watches Loki sleep for a few minutes, letting himself see the bony curve of Loki's back, the way his hair curls rebelliously at the back of his neck from the heat. 

He half-expects Loki to wake and taunt him, but Loki stays sleeping. His wrists are still raw, purple-green bruises under his skin, his hands heavy against the sheets.

He has not really had a chance to watch Loki, since their return. To catalogue with love what has become of his body, without desire being its sole purpose.

He knows his brother too well, but Loki has changed so much without Thor having noticed. Now that he has the permission to relearn his brother he wants to take it, to know Loki better than he did when they were small and had no secrets and hid from their guards, going into the town and posing as twins.

Loki's back is hot and sticky with sleep-sweat against his hand, and he does not stir. Eventually Thor falls asleep again.


	5. Chapter 5

They step through the gate into what was specified only as "New York City" - the operator explained, slowly, that without good coordinates, exact ones, the type that can only be generated by having a homing station at the other end, this was the best they could do - and into destruction.

Before them is rubble with twisted iron bars within, though he hopes it's not wholly impassible. The ceiling might not have entirely come down on the left side. 

The click of Loki's boots behind him is followed by another set, and Thor turns, his hand reaching for Mjölnir, half-expecting treachery, when he sees that it is only Aring'goe. She is holding a lantern.

"You join us, then?"

"Let's say I'd prefer to go with someone at least passingly familiar with the local customs," she says, glancing around. "Especially if I'm to act as Muspelheim's envoy to Midgard."

Loki picks his way across a tiled floor strewn with rubble, looking down into one of the small pits on either side of them. "I didn't hear any agreement about you joining us. Ah, rails."

"Rails?" She makes her way over to where Loki is. "A smaller gauge than in Muspelheim, and only two, but yes. Trains. I had no idea." She looks impressed. Thor cannot help but be proud on the Midgardians' behalf. If Aring'goe can learn to respect them, to like them, then perhaps the views of the other Realms will change, also. To bring Midgard into the trade alliances and debates and diplomacy that the other Realms are subject to, instead of ignored and all its people treated as no more than insects. Their lives are short, but that does not make them less able in their fields.

Jane would want to go to Asgard. To see the mechanisms that power the Bifrost, to learn their workings and bring them back to Midgard, and spread that knowledge. Midgard is the central realm, and having such a device – or, if he knows Midgardians as he thinks he does, two or three – would enable trade with any of the Realms, travel from any of them, and exploration of further places.

He takes in a deep breath – he did not see her when he was last here; she was away, protected, safely far from him, but he does wish to see her, now that he will be on Midgard for some time – and coughs.

And again, suddenly unable to stop.

"Something in the air," Aring'goe says, suddenly beside him, her hand warm on his shoulder. "Laufeyson, if you can clear the dust –"

A flicker of light from behind him, and slowly his coughing fades. He wipes his eyes and looks around. Loki is sitting on a small pile of stones – that cannot be comfortable – and his face, too, is red.

"We should cover our mouths and noses," Thor says, and is surprised by the roughness of his own voice. "Where are we?"

"Down," Aring'goe says immediately. "The ceiling was made. Unless Midgardians make buildings like this above-ground."

He looks around. "There are no windows."

"No?" Trust Aring'goe not to understand; the fire giants do not care for the light of their sun, too bright and hot.

"They love light, except in things that are not meant to be seen, or that are very large." He picks himself up off the floor. "If there are no windows, we are underground. And as you said, rails: for transit, or for moving goods."

Loki makes a low noise. "The so-called 'subways'. The archer thought of them. We thought to –" He cuts himself off, which is just as well. Whatever Loki thought of doing, it was clearly unnecessary. He sets his hand on one of the broken stones beside him, closing his eyes. Aring'goe returns to the edge of the floor, looking down again at the rails, though this time on the other side, and then says, "This side is passable."

"It goes into the tunnels, not up," Loki says, his eyes still closed. "There were stairs. Some of them have been destroyed. The closest ones are mostly intact, but we will have to clear them, and then there are pathways above, I think." His mouth twists. "They're not wholly passable, either." 

"And above that?"

"A floor?" He shakes his head. "It's too damaged to make sense of what it was from what it is now, at this distance."

"The stairs first, then," Thor says. "Where are they?"

"Through there." Loki points at the space where the floor fell in.

Thor reaches for Mjölnir, to begin clearing a path for them, when Loki says, "Don't, you idiot; you'll make more dust and besides that it'll all fall on your head!"

"Have you a better idea?"

Aring'goe snorts. "There's iron in the rails. They're probably intact enough under all the stones to channel any magic he wants to use."

"No," Loki says. "They're not one long rail – I can't use anything that won't carry current well, or doesn't –" His face shifts. "Thor."

"What is it?"

"If I have access to Mjölnir's conductivity, I can at least take us to a clear spot I found above." He's already making his way to Thor, stepping over small stones, dust crunching beneath his feet. Thor meets him halfway, and then Aring'goe is beside them, Loki's hand reaching for hers. Thor's hand on Loki's wrist, feeling nothing of his wounds, and Mjölnir is already humming with anticipation, her excitement roiling in Thor's belly, when Loki's fingers brush her uru head.

+++

There are two sets of stairs on either side of them, a sloping floor in one direction and a short corridor in the other. The stairs, like both of the corridors, are mostly blocked by rubble, though in the case of one stair it is less so than the other.

Something smells terrible, there is dust everywhere, and Thor can hear some sort of sound, of machinery perhaps.

Mjölnir thrums as Loki says, "To blur us into unremarkability," and Thor taps some of the rocks out of their way as they go up the stairs.

Everything is bright; there are lights everywhere, and motors beside them running loudly. There are men, in hats with lights above them, breaking up the rocks with strange machines, and the ceiling has holes in it, leading up to the sky. It must be how the equipment was brought in.

Some of the Midgardians glance in their direction, but do not truly see them. Only shadows, or rocks shifting.

"Shit," he hears one of them say, "Shit, I found some more."

"God damn it.," one of the others says.

Thor takes a few steps further – this floor is clear but for dust and pebble-sized pieces – holding the sleeve of his shirt over his nose and mouth, and looks.

It does not look like a thing that was once a person, at first. Or many people, at that. A tangle of yellow bone and skin and hair, dry and withering. Cut off from the air, smashed. Stains of blood dark against the floor.

Aring'goe whispers, "Laufeyson, what did you do?"

Loki doesn't look away. "I made an alliance that brought me here to conquer Midgard, and failed."

"And in the doing, caused thirty thousand people in this city to die," Thor says, sickened at the sight. Aring'goe makes a noise that Thor cannot classify, because Loki is turning, his hands suddenly hot against Thor's shoulders, thumbs hot on the tendons of his throat. 

"You're not nearly as horrified by that as you think you are," he snarls. "If you were so horrified you would have nothing to do with me regardless of where we were – would not pick and choose your times to love me and to resent me, and choose to resent me when you wished to seem compassionate. You cut me out of my manacles and brought me with you. It was your choice, and I'll thank you to _behave like it_."

Thor clenches his hands in Loki's shirt. Trust Loki to know what troubles him, and use it against him in anger. "You cannot think that it is easy to know what you did and still love you."

"Then either stop loving me or _shut up_."

Thor pushes Loki away.

"Well," Aring'goe says, and Thor startles. She is watching them, her hands in her skirt. "Seeing as the way out would be straight up…"

"Yes," Thor agrees, unfastening Mjölnir from his hip. It is no trouble to carry either of them the two floors to the ground.

The heavy pitting in the streets has been filled in, and the stranded vehicles and the bodies and much of the rubble have been cleared from them. The buildings are still destroyed, and he can see the tall metal-and-stone one that he stood upon when he called the lightning, the bright metal still blackened, curling from the walls, or twisted and distorted where it melted and began to run. The windows are covered with something that strains in even this wind, and the sun is bright and hot, the air humid.

He can see the building where he fought with Loki, still half-ruined, too clearly now that so many of the buildings between here and there are gone.

They walk. The city seems empty but for the workers cleaning and rebuilding, here and there. It is even more depressing than when he was last here, aiding the efforts to find and recover the living.

Nearer the tower, the streets are clearer, most of the shorter buildings even intact, and there seem to be people around. He can feel by the tingling of his skin that the three of them are still blurred to others' sight. He does not know what the people they see would make of him, let alone of Loki, or Aring'goe.

The sign at the door of the tower reads, _NEW YORK RECONSTRUCTION TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS_ , and they enter. 

Thor glances at Loki, who unblurs Thor. Suddenly his eyes do not quite catch on Loki, for all that he knows where Loki is, what he looks like. Aring'goe is visible, too, and as the room falls silent, the two (three? He cannot think that Loki would not be with them, but he cannot seem to spot him – in the corner, there? Or behind them?) of them move to the central desk.

Someone is already on a distance-talking device that Midgardians use to communicate with each other. "This is FEMA New York; Thor Odinsson and an unidentified extraterrestrial just appeared – "

He waits. Ten seconds later, the device is handed to him.

"Prince Thor," says Director Fury. Thor is fond of him – his gruffness, and his impatience, and his devotion to the people who work for him. That he is missing an eye, like Father, is perhaps part of it.

"Director Fury," he says, "but you have no need to use my title any longer; I have given it up."

"What."

"I am no longer prince of Asgard."

"And how'd that happen?"

"That would be better discussed elsewhere."

"We're coming to get you. Who's with you?"

"Ambassador Aring'goe, of the combine Ksoeng, in the realm of Muspelheim." She nods, apparently satisfied with the title.

"Anyone else?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"My brother."

" _I_ thought he was locked up in Asgard. Or do you have more than one brother?"

"It would be better if I explained elsewhere."

The Director is silent for a long moment, then says, "If he hasn't been killed yet, keep him alive until we get there. Arrival time estimated twenty minutes. Don't go anywhere, don't move, and don't start a fight."

"Understood."

"Fury out." A click. 

Thor returns the device to the person who gave it to him. "Director Fury says that he will have a team here in twenty minutes."

+++

Director Fury's team arrives in due course, whereupon they all three are shepherded into a flying vehicle – Loki drops his illusion once in the street – and brought aloft.

When they land, Director Fury meets them, several warriors in dark uniforms and carrying many weapons with him.

"Ambassador," he begins, then, "Thor," by way of greeting, and finally, flatly, "Loki." 

"Director," Loki says, voice low. Thor glances over, surprised – he half-expected Loki to make some gesture of insolence, but instead he sounds worn. It cannot have been the expenditure of energy on the illusion.

"We are here in peace, all of us," Aring'goe says. "Though I cannot claim to represent either Thor or Loki, that was the agreement made when Muspelheim provided them the means to come to Midgard with me."

"That so," Fury says, his jaw tightening. "Ambassador, I've got a diplomatic corps on their way; they'll be here in two hours. If you don't mind going with Sergeant Ogura here and waiting until then, I've got a meeting with these two."

"Not at all," she demurs. "Sergeant?"

+++

The first thing Fury says, once the three of them are in a small, nearly-windowless room within the compound, is, "What are you doing here?"

"I only followed Thor," Loki says.

Fury's jaw clenches, and Thor says quietly, "I am cast out of Asgard."

"Why."

"Because I let Loki free."

Fury laces his fingers together. "Did I just hear you say you _let him out_ after you were the one who was supposed to bring him back to Asgard for punishment?"

"I did."

"And what makes you think you'll be welcome on Earth when you tell people that?"

"I'm not here to hurt people," Loki says, very quietly. "Not this time." 

"What, you had a change of heart?"

"I was being held captive by them," Loki says mildly. "With further torture on one hand and giving them what they wanted on the other, which would you choose?"

"Dying," Fury says flatly. "You didn't seem too eager to sell them out. I'm not talking to you; we can build a prison to hold you."

"I will not allow my brother to be put in prison."

"I'm not your brother," Loki interjects, just before Fury says, " _We're not asking you._ "

Thor stands, reaching for Mjölnir, and the door slams open to reveal three armed men, weapons already raised. He pauses. Loki is still sitting, his hands in his lap.

"Sit down," Fury says.

"You cannot think that those –" Thor begins.

"Magnetic expanding rounds," Fury says. "We're not stupid."

"He's telling the truth," Loki says. "I can feel them."

Thor slides back into the seat, setting his hands on the table.

"Thank you. How'd you get here?"

"We were given passage to New York City through a gate in Muspelheim."

"Muspelheim."

"The fire giants' world."

"Fire giants. Like Aringo."

"Aring'goe. Her name is rendered in Asgard as _Jarnsaxa_ , which might be easier for you to pronounce."

"What makes them so interested in us all of a sudden?"

"Muspelheim is known for its industry and engineering," he begins, and Loki shifts, shaking his head.

"Jarnsaxa will want to learn about your resources, your industry, your technology, your money. She's an economist, and will be evaluating the trade opportunities available on Midgard. They have deep resources of," he rolls the word around in his mouth for a moment, then says, "petroleum, but not the variety that you think of when you hear it in your world. Slightly different. They produce most of the chemical industrial compounds that are used in the Upper Four Realms, and their combines own significant amounts of Asgardian national debt. She wants to know how fast they can own your planet."

Fury's mouth tightens. "Thor?"

"Muspelheim will want to trade. That Midgard has heavy industry already may prove a disappointment to them. Recent events in Alfheim have shown that the fire giant combines are not above seeking resources in other worlds, without the permission of the people of those realms, and not be censured by the central government."

"Great," Fury says, and then glances above their shoulders. "You got that? Watch what information the Ambassador gets, and get an analysis team on the energy signature they rode in on. I want a sweep out for anything like it anywhere on the globe."

Loki sets his hand on Thor's elbow, takes it away when Thor turns to him. He leans close and murmurs, "She will not be glad that you have said such things of them."

"If she did not want it to be known to the people of Midgard, she would not have negotiated for us to receive passage here."

Loki's face shifts minutely. "Does Alfheim know that it is Ksoeng that has invaded their territory?"

"No, and by now the tunnels have likely been emptied, and filled in."

Loki grins, suddenly, and sits back. Crosses his legs. In the casual clothing provided to them in Muspelheim, the baggy cotton trousers and the baggier shirt, it looks strange for him to be so self-assured.

"Care to tell the class what you two were just whispering about," Fury snaps.

"We arrived in Muspelheim, and into Jarnsaxa's assistance, by a circuitous route," Loki says, oddly formal. "Through the unauthorized mine in Alfheim that Jarnsaxa's combine is or was operating, in fact. Yet knowing that we would expose Ksoeng – remind Thor to explain combines, in a moment – she has still aided us in coming here." He rests his chin on his palm, elbow on the arm of the chair. "It occurs to me that she may want us to expose the mine."

"Why?" Thor says, at the same moment as Fury says, "What?"

+++

It comes down to this: Aring'goe could as easily have had them disappear en route to that meeting with Surtr, or even before. That they were instead permitted to go through to Midgard, even with what they knew, means that not only she, but also Surtr, want the knowledge of the mine, and which combine was running it, to spread.

Fury does not seem comforted by the knowledge. Thor does not begrudge him his concerns, but he is still conscious of the weapons that are likely trained upon them, and Fury's reference to imprisoning Loki.

After some time, Fury stands and says, "We're done for now. We'll probably want you to talk tomorrow. You'll be staying here. Al-Mansouri will take you. Don't do anything that might make us nervous and we won't take warranted measures." He nods in farewell.

In the room left for them, Thor sits in the chair and Loki on the edge of the bed, leaning towards each other.

"They will be listening to us," Thor says quietly, and Loki breathes in, out. Makes a low noise halfway between a snarl and a laugh. "I can't turn it off."

"What?"

He gestures at the walls. "They have something conductive surrounding the room. Possibly even superconductive, and once the current starts it increases enough to interfere with whatever is happening in the room, proportionate to what the field would be at the distance implied by being in the room, rather than what actually reaches the container. It's ingenious, actually." He shifts his elbows, flexing his fingers. "No need to make manacles of lodestone, when the lodestone required would likely pay for a setup like this, and more."

It means they expected to need to contain an Æsir or Jotun sorcerer again someday, and thought enough on how Loki's magic works to formulate this. And then had impetus enough to actually build it.

"That they built a chamber like this one, means they expected to need to contain you once more."

The corner of Loki's mouth curls. "They were right."

"No," he says, and looks at Loki's hands, and then, "Yes." Who else could it have been meant for? What other Asgardian sorcerer do they know, and wish to defend against?

"I don't mind," Loki murmurs. "I can act in good faith. After how many of them died in the battle."

Thor glances at his face, and sees nothing but sadness. Loki is acting. How foolish to hope for true remorse. How foolish to love him, when he sees Midgardians as only tools, barely sentient, and Thor loves so the bright-quick world they have made.

He sets his hand on the back of Loki's neck and feels the warmth of him, the quiet scratch of the small hairs there. At least in this, Loki does not lie to him: he leans forward, pressing their foreheads together, allowing Thor's hand to stay.

"You will forgive me," he whispers, "for not kissing you; even such creatures as these would understand what that leads to, between us."

"Yes," Thor agrees, and keeps the space between them. 

+++

The meeting the next day is not with Director Fury, but rather with some other, and he and Loki are separated. They are likely checking for inconsistencies, so he speaks as honestly as is reasonable.

When he mentions that the verdict, had Loki not been a sorcerer, would have been in favor of execution, the SHIELD agent tenses and says, "What made them decide against it, then?"

"Loki is a sorcerer, and it is...known, that sorcerers may do things counter to the natural order of things. Our own father hung himself on a tree for knowledge of the worlds that is not normally known to the living, and ways of sorcery that are not normally done. It was worried that if executed, Loki would return to life more powerful."

"Right. Excuse me."

"A moment - " He makes to set a hand on her wrist, but stops himself first." He has said to me that his shadow was bound by the Chitauri, the aliens that brought the attack on New York. That in death he would return to them. It was intended to be a threat, if it is true. If it is true, he is afraid of dying, because they will take their defeat out on him." He clenches his fists. "I cannot allow that to happen, do you understand?"

"If you'll excuse me," she says, and stands. Leaves the room, and closes the door behind her. It locks.

She returns quickly, and continues speaking with him. He answers the questions about his disinheritance as best he can without revealing the circumstances under which they became exiled, hoping that Loki will do the same. He tells her only that Völund's treatment of Loki was dishonorable, and he could not end it without showing dissent against Loki's sentence, and so his choice was between his honor as prince of Asgard, his sense of faith in Asgard's truest justice, his love for his brother; and his birthright, his obedience to the letter of the law.

"How could I choose other than I did?" he asks. Like his other questions, she does not answer, only takes notes in a small booklet and listens, posing questions of her own. His answers are given of his own choosing; at least that cannot be denied.

He spends all of it worried what Loki is telling them. If their stories differ, who will they believe? In Asgard there was no need; their parents seemed to always know what had happened, and when they didn't, they had asked Heimdall already.

+++

Eventually the questions end. He has been through the story three times, with two different interviewers, and is tired; they fed him, and though it was well enough, he wishes to know where Loki is, and how he fares. What Loki told them, and what will happen to the both of them.

Aring'goe will be fine. She speaks on behalf of Muspelheim, which is an unknown quantity to SHIELD, and to Midgard; they will not want to offend her needlessly. 

He doubts Loki's theory that Aring'goe and Surtr, and by extension the Muspel government, would want to allow Ksoeng's misdeeds in Alfheim to become known. It is more likely that they do not expect Midgard to speak to other worlds.

Another night.

In the morning, they are taken to different rooms, and Aring'goe comes to see them. She is cleanly dressed, and when she and Thor clasp arms, her skin is warmer than Thor remembered. 

"How go your negotiations?" he asks, and she smiles.

"Well enough. There is little enough to negotiate: we cannot negotiate for what we do not know we want, or do not know we do not want. I can see why Asgard would have historically had little interest in such a place; they did not even harness electricity until two centuries ago, and they are as a species little inclined to magic that would help them develop scientifically. Yet they have far surpassed our own ability to incorporate technology into daily tasks." She cups a hand to the side of her face. "This 'phone' device they all seem to possess – it is not magical at all, and yet…" Her smile is bright.

"Yes," Thor agrees. "Their cultures and languages are myriad, and they live so short a time that they are bright with it."

"Yes," she says, and folds her hands in her lap, careful. "In the interest of Muspelheim's debt to you, I have made it clear to this organization that you are both owed a debt by Muspelheim, and that it is our great wish that you both remain free as long as neither of you behaves further in a way counter to the safety of their people. I think they will try to observe the letter of the agreement, rather than the spirit, but I think you will be safe long enough for me to speak with Leader Surtr and return."

"Thank you," Loki says. "If your portal coordinates are located in that ruined building, you might as well have Ksoeng or Juyeo send over something to help clear it. As a gesture of goodwill." His accent in pronouncing the combine names is laughably vile.

"I had considered that," she says.

"Do not do anything foolish," she continues, and leans across the table to take Thor's hand. He grips hers in return, feeling her warmth. She has done so much for them.

Her smile widens. "Make your brother earn me something worth having," she says. 

He kisses the back of her hand, her half-scaled skin rough against his lips, and says, "I have never been able to make him do anything he did not wish to do himself. You must take that quarrel up with him directly."

Loki snorts. "Your courtship is embarrassing for onlookers. Go represent your realm, Jarnsaxa, and stop wasting your time on an outlaw. Thor, you should know better than to ruin women above your station." The words are harsh, but his tone is easy rather than furious.

"I have the right to court anyone I wish," Aring'goe says archly. "Being economically endowed myself, I have no need of marriage."

Loki's boots scuff along the floor. "What?"

"You did not know? Marriage is not the only way to be in a relationship." 

"Of course not; there's adultery."

She rolls her eyes. "No. Children carry on one's own property, finances, and name within the combine. Marriage is an economic union – mostly for those with a name but no money, or vice versa, or lines wishing to merge. Or for those who do not wish their economic lines to remain separate, through some gross romanticism or another.

"The child of your body is your own heir – if you cannot bear, a marriage might be worthwhile, as it unifies the economic and financial lines. Your spouse's child could be your heir, if necessary. But otherwise…" She shrugs. "I was married, once. An arranged match. A higher house within Yanggieh, a better name, a family that had made bad investments. And then I was tapped for government service, and so I divorced her."

Thor cannot think whether to be more surprised at the divorce – of course, divorce is permitted in Asgard, in cases of infidelity, or where the wife is not being properly maintained by her husband, but divorce over reputation seems vile and cold, somehow – or her casual reference to having been married to a woman.

"How can a marriage between women be valid if marriage is only for children?" Loki says. The edge of sarcasm to his voice is undercut by shock.

Aring'goe stares at him. "Yours cannot? What do you do to women, in Asgard?"

"Nothing!"

"And your men cannot –"

"Of course not!"

"What have you Æsir done to yourselves?" she whispers. 

Before Loki can work himself into a rage over how he is truly Jotun, and he thanks you to remember it – because perhaps he was born there, and born to Jotun parents, but he has always thought himself Æsir, and been treated as such – Thor says, "Do you mean to say that fire giants may both bear and sire children, each of them?"

"Of course." She frowns at them. "How is it that the Æsir, alone among the three Season-Races, cannot?"

"Innate biological and cultural differences, I would imagine," Loki says, and flicks an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. "And before our captors get the brilliant idea of taking me apart to see my genitals, I'd thank you to go home."

She laughs and cups Loki's cheek. It is unspeakably intimate, but he does not pull away. Thor cannot think why, besides the bone-certain knowledge that the three of them are being watched.

"Fare well in my absence; I will not be gone long," she says, and sweeps out the door.

+++

Back in their chamber, Loki strips naked and goes into the small chamber adjoining the room, which contains both toilet and a bathing device, and closes the door. 

Thor does not think he is relieving himself, nor is the water running for the vertical bath that the Midgardians he has met seem to prefer.

Loki is there for an hour. Finally, Thor knocks on the door and says, "Brother, are you well?"

"Leave me be."

"Is it because Aring'goe thinks you Æsir, and you insist on believing you are not?"

"How in the name of all the cycles of all our lives can you be so _stupid_ ," Loki snarls, and opens the door.

His skin is every inch the moonless blue of winter skies just after sunset, his eyes a hard bright red. There are lines etched in his skin, the careful patterns worked into Jotun bloodlines by their skill with genetics, and his tattoos remain on his arms, clear beneath his skin.

"I am Jotun," he says flatly. "All the posturing, all the shape-shifting, all the mannerisms and the upbringing you can bear upon it, and I will never be Æsir. That you insist otherwise is embarrassing at best."

"But you do not think as a Jotun born and raised in Jotunheim would; you did not know the parents who gave you life were other than mine until recently. You lived as Æsir for so long – how can you believe yourself otherwise?"

"Because that body you know is a lie, even to me," Loki says flatly. There is a rime of frost collecting on his skin. "What I thought I knew of myself is a lie. What I thought I knew of my body is a lie. Did you not hear her? That the Jotnar are as the fire giants: both sexes." His hand on the jamb of the door is shaking.

Thor glances down. Loki in this form seems sexless, almost. "Would you show me?" he asks.

Loki's eyebrows rise. "Where our captors can watch, and perhaps also listen? I did not think you so eager to –"

"Is this other room monitored?" Thor gestures behind Loki.

"Not from every angle," Loki says carefully, and then they are inside it, the door shut, Loki in the corner of the partition that pours water over the head.

"You can touch me," he begins. "The freezing reaction is a defense mechanism, the result of a chemical excreted on the skin when frightened or fighting. It harms other Jotnar as well."

Thor lays his hand against Loki's cheek. He is cool to the touch, yes, but not painfully so.

"I knew already that for protection against the cold, the prick and bollocks are kept inside the body," Loki says, clinical, "and that the former emerges for the act." He brushes his fingertips against the place between his legs where his prick would be, were he in an Æsir skin. 

"And while I had guessed that at least some Jotnar were capable of both, I did not think of myself so, nor realize that further back…" his hand slides deeper between his legs. His head is tilted up, yet even with his face changed ever-so-slightly it is still clear that he is in pain, wrapped up in anger and frustration.

"Loki," Thor says. "Stop. Stop it!" His fingers close around Loki's wrist and Loki shudders.

"It is how I was made," he says lowly. "You cannot deny that my strength in sorcery makes sense, now. That I am not and never have been a man."

"No. That is _wrong_. Did you never think that if your body had felt wrong to you, that you would have changed it as you grew? If you did not feel it right to be the height you are, and have dark hair and grey eyes and bones like knives under your skin, then you would have made yourself otherwise as you grew. I have _seen_ you make yourself other shapes, other skins. The body you wore all those years is the one you saw for yourself."

"That does not make it real," Loki says. 

"Of course it does. You made it, by yourself, of your own will." 

"And what of the fact of who bore me?" 

"You were raised in Asgard and are of Asgardian society. Why should you not consider yourself Æsir?" 

Loki swallows. "Again: a Jotun womb spat me out. That can't make me anything but Jotun." 

"You know I don't agree." 

"Yes." Loki presses his forehead against Thor's shoulder. His hand is still between his thighs, and in the closeness of the small chamber his skin is sticky with growing sweat from the relative heat. 

"Tyr was named Odin's successor," Loki says finally. 

"He will be a good king." Thor slides his palm down Loki's back. He cannot feel any markings there, but isn't sure if that's because Loki has none, or because they aren't raised from his skin. 

"He'll hate it." 

"Yes." Tyr is skilled at war, is clever and a fine strategist, but when he is not training, or doing his duty to the royal house, can be found in the gardens, weeding. He was probably a bastard, abandoned at the steps of Hymir's fief-house. Hymir's fief is the poorest in Asgard; his father managed it badly, and there have been alternate droughts and floods for a century and more. Hymir's wife was barren and he loved her too well to take a mistress, or to divorce her; and so when Tyr came to him it was a gift. 

Tyr was raised in the fief's fields, and in the training halls, and he prefers to go barefoot when he can, and to dress like a simple freeman. He will hate every second of being king, but accept the throne nonetheless. Thor is humbled by his loyalty to Asgard, and to Father. 

"If you can provide a child, even if you are disinherited, your crimes will not fall upon it, and the succession would be secure." 

Thor's breath stops in his chest. "No - what you are suggesting – you would hate it, you would hate yourself, you would hate me. No." 

"It would only be a year." 

"A year in a body that you loathe, and a child inside you when there was never meant to be. And then if the child were a girl?" 

Loki's hand shifts to cup Thor. The cold is shocking, there. "You can't tell me you don't want children." 

"Not by the means you are imagining." 

"How else, then?" Loki's smirk is wholly false. "You'd enjoy it, seeing me fat with your child, even in this body." 

"You cannot think I wish to see you in pain." 

"This body is meant for it." 

"That does not mean you must - " 

"Do you know, thinking about it now, I'm not wholly sure I'm _not_ Sleipnir's mother," Loki interrupts. "Summoning eldritch beings from the void is such an inexact science. How do I know I didn't spend a year there, in this body I didn't know I had, and bear a horse to bring back with me? I don't remember much of the rite, after all." 

Thor stares at him. "Loki," he says, slowly, "you summoned Sleipnir before your voice dropped. How would it have been possible for you to bear him?" 

Loki shrugs. "Many things are possible with sorcery." 

"Do you truly believe that you did?" 

Loki's fingers tighten on his hips. "How would I know?" 

"Physical damage?" 

Loki snorts. "I didn't wake up in a puddle of my own blood with afterbirth between my legs, if that's what you mean." 

"Then I doubt you are his mother." 

Loki laughs, though it has a helpless note to it that makes Thor uneasy, and leans forward again, seeking his mouth. Thor opens for him, presses their bodies closer. Perhaps it is unwise to show passion to Loki in this body, but it is still Loki, and in every skin he is still himself. 

It turns out that a Jotun's prick is not quite like an Æsir's, after all, but Thor hardly minds, not when it curls around his, and every rock of his hips has Loki crying out against his throat. Not when, afterwards, Loki strokes at his back and laughs and says, "I think the current raised by that, and the conductor outside, may have blurred their recording devices." 

"They will probably replace them," Thor says. 

"Yes," Loki sighs, and pushes him away to turn the bath-water on, ice-cold. 

+++ 

Aring'goe returns two days later, bringing with her three large machines from Juyeo and fifty staffers. They join the cleanup efforts, their strength aiding in the effort to remove stones from the depths of the station, and they begin their work at the level the Midgardians had not even reached, and which had been, she tells them in passing, closed early on in the attack. 

Loki speaks with her, alone, for several hours. When he returns, he tells Thor nothing constructive. 

She meets with Thor the next day, and when he asks, she says, "Midgard is attempting to gain contact with Asgard. Since Loki has been missing for so long, they want him found." 

"The chamber where we are being kept blocks his magic," Thor says. "Heimdall will know where we are." 

" _They_ don't know that." 

He looks at the false window in the side of the room. She waves a hand. "They turn those off for me." 

"Are you sure?" 

"I wear devices intended to disrupt such things, if they are so crass as to attempt to monitor my conversations with you." She rests her chin in her palm, regarding him. "Your brother says he wishes you to secure the Asgardian succession and have a child." 

"I will not." 

"Not by him, or not at all?" 

Thor freezes. 

"I knew all along that you had been disinherited; I have known since the ride the capital what you are to each other." She closes her eyes. "I cannot say I understand, but I am fond of you both." 

He is not sure what he feels. Embarrassment, perhaps, at having tried to protect this secret between himself and Loki that was never secret at all; or having been known by Aring'goe for so long. "He would not call us brothers." 

"That does not change what it is," she says. 

"No. It doesn't." 

"When the initial negotiations are over, between this government and Muspelheim – and may I say, it is _terrifying_ that they have so many little nations within their world – if you find that you wish to give Asgard a blood heir, you have only to ask." 

He bows his head. "I am unworthy of the offer." 

"Don't be ridiculous. I choose your worth to me. That is, after all, how economics works." Her smile is all teeth. "In the meantime, I hope to speak to you again soon." 

+++ 

He asks to speak with his former companions in the group known as the Avengers, and is told that the Man of Iron has suffered battle-trauma and has run from his memories to the other side of the country, where he lingers with his intended, pretending he has no pain. 

Doctor Banner is doing research at a facility some three hours from the city, something involving a type of radiation related to that which gave him his other form. The group's leader, Captain America, is aiding in the rebuilding efforts. 

Thor wonders if he and Aring'goe have met, and if so, what they think of each other. 

The archer, Hawkeye, is away, working, as is the Black Widow. His requests to meet any of them are all denied, and finally Fury meets him and says, "As long as you're sticking up for your brother, you're not leaving this facility. We can't take the risk that he'll try to take over again, and that this time you'll join him." 

"I see," Thor says, nodding. His chest aches. Were he in their position, he might believe the same thing. That it is not true, he cannot help. Loki's deeds are already too terrible to trust any who would still keep faith with him. 

+++ 

Two days later, Loki is searching in the packs they brought with them, and he holds up the small packet of hard candies that Thor found in his chambers all those weeks ago. It feels like another life, though perhaps it was. 

"Want one?" 

"Yes, thank you." 

Loki shakes a few of them onto his palm, then says, "Here. Bonfire fruit flavored." He passes it to Thor. Its sweetness is faint, mild and light. Bonfire fruits are rare in the capital, grown primarily in the north, and while Thor has had them a few times, they are not his favorite, not against the bright sharp sourness of lemons or the soft sweetness of peaches. 

He eats it. 

Three hours later, after an indifferent meal not much different from anything else they have been given here, he is throwing up. Repeatedly. 

Loki calls their guards after the second time, and he is taken to the medical center within the compound. He falls unconscious halfway there, reviving only to vomit once more, and then again an hour later. 

+++ 

He wakes to Loki sitting by his side. Loki's hands are bound again, in the lodestone cuffs that he wore in Asgard; but his hands are clasped around Thor's own, and that is gratifying. 

"You're being rehydrated," Loki says quietly. "They've stuck a needle in your arm, and are permitting me to be here on sufferance." 

"I am glad you are here," Thor says. He tightens his grip on Loki's hand, briefly, feeling his muscles shake. 

"Shush," Loki says, letting go with one hand to brush hair off Thor's forehead. 

He wakes again feeling much better. Loki is not beside him, and there is some sort of commotion in the hall. 

Fury arrives ten minutes later. "What is Loki planning," he says flatly. He doesn't sit down. 

"I do not understand. Where is he?" 

"We don't know either. While you were passed out and he was wearing the cuffs you all designed to hold him, he figured out how to get out of them and disappeared. I repeat: what. Is. He. Planning." 

"I don't know. I did not know the cuffs did not work." Thor swallows. Thinks of Loki picking the candy out for him, and his illness, and closes his eyes. "I will go find him." 

"Yeah, no. You're staying right here where we can keep an eye on you." 

"He poisoned me. I am honor-bound to find the reason." 

"Really?" Fury watches him levelly. "Because last update I got from Asgard, you weren't considered as having any honor left, after you let him go." 

"Perhaps that is true in the eyes of the law, but I do not see it that way." He moves to stand, and though it is difficult, he is well enough for it. "I will find him." 

Fury swears. "You know we're going to be looking for the two of you." 

"Yes," Thor agrees, and then, "Thank you." 

He follows Mjölnir's voice down into the building, past warriors and analysts and engineers, and none of them stop him. When he has her again in his hand, he sees that Loki has taken everything but one set of Thor's clothes, informal garments that do not clearly identify him as alien to Midgardian eyes, so he dresses, and follows the bright red signs reading EXIT, and then he is gone from there. 

He realizes, over a body of water that is too wide to be a river and too small to be an ocean, that the Avengers will never have him, now, and so he sets down in a small forest. Sits with his back against a tree and watches the sun pass across the sky. He grieves. They were all so bright, and so full of life and of the desire to protect others. He will miss them, long past their own short lives, though he only knew them for a few days. 

He doubts he will be so fondly remembered, now. 

+++ 

Three months later, he has spent much of the intervening time working his way across the United States, carrying Mjölnir – ruffians have tried three times to steal her, and each time he has only had to wait for them to give up – and whatever clothes he finds or is given. His back is strong, so there is usually something he can do to pay his way for the next few days, and though he speaks strangely, when he becomes proficient enough in English to stop using the All-Tongue, they seem appeased when he says he is from some other land, usually Australia. He got the idea from a young woman who allowed him to travel in her car between the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and hopes he never meets someone from Australia, wherever it is. 

Occasionally on the news he has seen images of the Avengers fighting, or Captain America making speeches memorializing those lost in the battle in New York, which is beginning to be called "5/4". 

Then there is a storm, and he goes back. What else could he do but help? 

His affinity for lightning and electricity makes him good with the Midgardian way of bringing electricity into their homes, so he begins work with the electrical systems that have been so damaged. He joins a crew in New Jersey, and then in New York, moving from site to site and helping as he is able. 

He visits Manhattan, where with the assistance of Muspelheim, Grand Central Station was just about to reopen. With his travels, he has heard little from Aring'goe, though he has heard hints that Ksoeng was broken up, as the verdict from both Asgard and Alfheim was that the overreach of their authority had been the act of an unfettered monopoly. He does wonder if that had been the goal, if Aring'goe's resignation from the Central Bank had been a cover for an investigation into finding if Ksoeng was too large and too powerful. The thought that he was able to help in this, even if in some small way, pleases him. Perhaps it has even helped the Elves and the Dwarves who were involved learn to respect and appreciate one another, though he has only modest expectations on that front. 

Still in the clothing he was wearing to work on the power lines, he is permitted to enter the ruins of Grand Central, and so he walks through the spots that are being repaired. Finds the stairs near where he, Loki, and Aring'goe saw the workers, and fought, and stands there, looking down. The 7 train was the first to reopen, with the fire giants' help, but it is closed again after the tunnel flooded in the storm. 

"Make yourself useful, won't you," says a man behind him, one of the workers here, by his accent. 

Thor turns. "Sorry," he says, reflexive, "where was I?" 

"The uptown –" the man begins, and then falls silent. "Are you seriously that Thor guy, or do you just look like him?" 

Thor shrugs. "A resemblance," he says. It is not a lie, not really. 

"Well, either way, get working." 

+++ 

At the end of the day, he goes to the top of the Chrysler building, which is mostly intact but for where he damaged it himself, and smoothes out the distorted lines of the façade. He leaves them blackened, in case it is meant to stand as a memorial, and the places where the edges melted and dripped, he leaves alone, but at least this way it is firmly secured. 

This loss was not his to bear, so he cannot be _over it_ , as Americans (and he is learning, slowly, what that means, and how it is different from others on Midgard) would say. He is a part of it, perhaps, but not as it is to the people he has met since then, from all corners of America and some other places. Midgard is not his world, and may never be, for all that he expects to spend the rest of his long, long life here. 

He sits there until it is night, and the sky is dark blue (like jeans, like Loki's Jotun skin), and goes to get himself a slice of pizza. 

Outside the remains of the station, at the foot of the Chrysler building, is a small open space; he sits there, with his 99-cent slice of pizza, and wishes Loki were here to see this city from the ground. It is, perhaps, just as beautiful as it is from the air. 

+++ 

Three days later, they begin work to reopen the 7 subway, and another two crews join them. He doesn't think anything of it – several crews working at once is normal, in this situation – until he hears the accent of one of them, as different from the others as his own, but not the same. 

The man is tall, rangy, pale. A redhead, with a ready smile and a quicker laugh, and the moment they are on break Thor sets a hand on his shoulder and says, "Brother." 

"Oh, damn," Loki says, in Asgardian. "I was hoping you wouldn't notice." He turns. He is still wearing this other skin, and just as well. 

"I have been looking for you." 

Loki spreads his hands. "I didn't go far." 

You're _helping_." 

Loki's eyebrows rise. "Yes? What did you expect me to do? Do you think I _want_ to be hunted across a thousand worlds?" 

"I had hoped not," Thor says, and hugs him. Loki's hands are heavy against his back. 

"In my defense," Loki says, "I do owe a few people some money, so this seemed the best way to go about attempting reparations." 

"I am only glad to have found you again," Thor says. 

 

 

 

 

 

**End Notes (these are approximately twice the length of the actual end note space):**

This story owes its origin partially to Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy, economic losses from which were estimated to be about 80 billion USD in the weeks after the storm (when I began this fic). This includes not only direct property damage but also the lost productivity and its ripple effects. Given the damage that was done in the Avengers movie, I expect that economic losses from the Chitauri attack would be similar or greater, considering that the battle took place in central Manhattan (Grand Central Terminal, a hub for many commuters, is actually destroyed on-screen, for example). It also seems that the battle took place during the workday, so the buildings in central Manhattan that were destroyed would have been full of people.  
Some sources have quoted USD 160 billion (short billion, for those out there keeping track):  
http://hurricane.methaz.org/avengers_estimate.pdf 

The death toll is _extremely loosely_ extrapolated from the Twin Towers, where fatalities outnumbered injuries/survivors; the numbers I give here are based on an extremely conservative back-of-the-envelope calculation of the equivalent of 15 buildings being almost totally destroyed, with the ensuing extrapolated death toll; with pedestrians mostly surviving. This is not realistic. 

I also did a back-of-the-envelope on the weregild; the value of an Asgardian life is set at 200 head of cattle, which rounds up very slightly from a historical value (189). I halved that for the death of a human, and halved again for injuries. The weregild value quoted is approximately equivalent to 6 [short] billion USD, assuming that lodestone in Asgard fetches similar price-per-weight to gold on Earth, which is of course ridiculous but I needed some way of converting value. 

The story of burying venomous creatures is from Chinese _gu_ sorcery. 

If you didn't see the allusion to astolat's "Athelas" you need to go away and reread her fic, because it's a superior piece of fiction.

The description of how to shoe a horse has had liberties taken with it, somewhat deliberately – blacksmiths and farriers are related but not identical (they take different skill sets but both require metalworking capabilities). 

The use of _combine_ to refer to the pillars of Muspelheim's economic and financial structure is somewhat misleading; the term is now associated with Soviet states, while Muspelheim is intended to be governed by a form of Italian Fascism. "Conglomerate" seemed insufficiently industrial-punk, while zaibatsu/keiretsu/chaebol are obvious loanwords and would "Orientalize" Muspelheim, so although admittedly the contrast of cyberpunk-flavored East Asian loanwords with alien space Vikings did appeal, I went with _combine_.

Asgard in this fic has two moons on slightly different cycles; one comes full every three weeks (where a week is ten days); the other comes full once a season (every four months, out of a total of sixteen months per year). Yes, the Asgardian year is longer than ours.

I was in Manhattan for much of the week following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, because in real life I actually commute into Grand Central. Trains on the 4/5/6 lines, two stories below ground, which run north-south and through Grand Central (42nd St), stopped there due to flooding and power loss on many of the streets south ("downtown" or "below") of it. The 7 is below the 4/5/6, approximately three stories below ground, and had flooding problems in the tunnels between the boroughs of Queens and Manhattan (there's a river separating them). The S also goes through Grand Central, and essentially functions as a link between the East and West sides of Manhattan. 

In this fic, specifically because we see people going into the subway, and because Captain America tells the cops to get people out of the area via the subway, I posited that the 4/5/6 were used briefly to attempt to shuttle people out of Grand Central, but that the 7 was closed due to bottlenecking relating to the tunnels and to potential damage to the station in the other direction. The damage to Grand Central Terminal's aboveground (Metra) part, in this fic, also caused collapses on the 4/5/6 lines, which may or may not have crushed several hundred to several thousand people to death, depending on how many people were there and the size of the collapse. Damage was also sustained on the 7 tracks, but it was much more limited in scope due to the depth, and also the loss of life was negligible due to service having been suspended.

 

And now that you've sat through the credits: 

The rough sound of footsteps along the path to the forge is well-loud, even over the noise of the fire; Völund falls still, reaching for the knife in his boot.

The door opens. 

His caller is a tall creature, perhaps six ells in height – one of the giants, then, and clad in a long hooded cloak. 

"Who comes?" he says, and turns on the stool. His thigh aches.

"A widow, from a far and cold land," says the stranger, and pushes down the cloak-hood to reveal blue skin, made violet with the warmth of an Asgardian autumn.

Völund grasps his knife the more tightly. He fought in the war, long ago, making swords and shields in the back of the army's encampments; but he did not bear a grude against the Jotnar until one of them killed Tofa.

"You are not welcome here," he says.

"I will not be long, and I have only questions." The Jotun holds up empty hands, as though that means anything, when they create blades from the water in their blood. "I seek the once-prince known as Loki, and I heard that you might know where he is."

Völund spits onto the floor. "He was here, and then he left Asgard. To Muspelheim, last I heard. Left me hamstrung."

The Jotun nods. "You know nothing more?"

"I know he lies with his own brother, and that he is a Jotun foundling."

The Jotun's face does something strange, then. A widening of the eyes, a sharp heavy breath.

"Then I will give you this, in return," the Jotun says. "He is kinslayer and matricide both, and for the crimes against our people we will have him from whatever lair he has found."

Völund snorts. "You think you can hold him where we can't?"

The Jotun's eyes are vivid red in the near-darkness. "It is not so difficult to hold an Æsir on Jotunheim."

"You know he is a sorcerer."

A slow shift of weight. "Our geneticists have retroviruses for that. And Asgard will want its lost, dishonored prince back, as well. To see to the meting out of justice."

Völund nods. "You have the right of it, I think. I'd surely like to see them both get their due."

"Yes," says the Jotun. "I thank you."

"Anything to punish the men who lamed me," Völund says, though he still holds the knife.

"And who killed my spouse." 

"If you can't get them from wherever they've holed up?" Völund asks. It is why he himself has not gone seeking them – that and his injury, which is permanent now, after how long he lay without medical attention, and the infection that set in while he waited for someone to come looking for him.

The Jotun smiles, all teeth. "Asgard's presumptive heir cannot afford to have a potential usurper extant, nor any children of that severed line. A political risk, you know. He will want them both brought to proper justice just as much as we do." Ey tilts eir head, and for a moment, despite the lack of hair and the blue skin, Völund can see the strange sharpness of Loki's face echoed in this one. 

Disowned prince twice over, then, if he reads the retroviral-scar married clan markings right, and he thinks he does. He learned them well enough during the war. 

"Good luck," he says, and on an impulse, staggers from his stool and limps to the corner, where some older pieces are kept.

"You might want this," he says, handing it hilt-first to the Jotun. "If you care for swords."

"I do. What is it?"

"Uru core. Tipped with an ever-current alloy that works below the kinds of temperatures you like." A blade made to kill sorcerers, that, though it will certainly be not kind to any Æsir.

The Jotun's breath deepens. "I am grateful."

"I cannot have my own justice," Völund says. "Even if I must have a Jotun take it for me, then at least I will have it."

The Jotun rests a hand over eir heart. "May we both have our vengeance."

 

And now, for something completely different, courtesy of peridium: 


End file.
